Professor Nutt has, laudably, staked the credibility of science in public policy on getting politicians to put away their moralsentiments and face up to statistics.
In his 1759 book the "Theory of the MoralSentiments, " philosopher Adam Smith argued that empathy (he called it sympathy) was motivated by the capacity to imagine being another person.
If her talk of ethics sounds fluffy, recall that in 1759 Adam Smith earned his reputation by publishing "The Theory of MoralSentiments, " in which he accounted for the emergence of sympathy and moral judgments.