Bioethical issues remain front-page news, with debate continuing to rage over issues including genetic modification, animal cloning, and 'designer babies'. With public opinion often driven by media speculation, how can we ensure that informed decisions regarding key bioethical issues are made in a reasoned, objective way? Bioethics: An Introduction for the Biosciences offers a balanced, objective introduction to the field of bioethics, ideal for any biosciences student who is new to the subject. With a focus on developing the students' power of reasoning and judgement, the book presents different perspectives to common themes in an impartial way, fostering debate and discussion. The opening section, 'The Ethical Groundwork', introduces students to the nature of bioethics and ethical theory. The book goes on to lead students through a broad range of bioethical issues relating to people, animals, and food, before concluding with an overview of bioethics in practice. The current generation of students will become the next generation of decision makers. Bioethics: An Introduction for the Biosciences is the perfect introduction to a field with which every biosciences student should be familiar. Online Resource Centre The Online Resource Centre features: For registered adopters of the book: - Figures from the book in electronic format, ready to download For students: - A web link library and hyperlinked reference list, giving ready access to additional information sources; - Topical updates: extensive summaries of the latest developments in those topics covered in the book, ensuring that the reader can remain up-to-date at all times

In "Enhancing Evolution," leading bioethicist John Harris dismantles objections to genetic engineering, stem-cell research, designer babies, and cloning and makes an ethical case for biotechnology that is both forthright and rigorous. Human enhancement, Harris argues, is a good thing--good morally, good for individuals, good as social policy, and good for a genetic heritage that needs serious improvement. "Enhancing Evolution" defends biotechnological interventions that could allow us to live longer, healthier, and even happier lives by, for example, providing us with immunity from cancer and HIV/AIDS. Further, Harris champions the possibility of influencing the very course of evolution to give us increased mental and physical powers--from reasoning, concentration, and memory to strength, stamina, and reaction speed. Indeed, he says, it's not only morally defensible to enhance ourselves; in some cases, it's morally obligatory.

In a new preface, Harris offers a glimpse at the new science and technology to come, equipping readers with the knowledge to assess the ethics and policy dimensions of future forms of human enhancement.

A pithy work of philosophical anthropology that explores why humans find moral orders in natural orders. Why have human beings, in many different cultures and epochs, looked to nature as a source of norms for human behavior? From ancient India and ancient Greece, medieval France and Enlightenment America, up to the latest controversies over gay marriage and cloning, natural orders have been enlisted to illustrate and buttress moral orders. Revolutionaries and reactionaries alike have appealed to nature to shore up their causes. No amount of philosophical argument or political critique deters the persistent and pervasive temptation to conflate the "is" of natural orders with the "ought" of moral orders. In this short, pithy work of philosophical anthropology, Lorraine Daston asks why we continually seek moral orders in natural orders, despite so much good counsel to the contrary. She outlines three specific forms of natural order in the Western philosophical tradition-specific natures, local natures, and universal natural laws-and describes how each of these three natural orders has been used to define and oppose a distinctive form of the unnatural. She argues that each of these forms of the unnatural triggers equally distinctive emotions: horror, terror, and wonder. Daston proposes that human reason practiced in human bodies should command the attention of philosophers, who have traditionally yearned for a transcendent reason, valid for all species, all epochs, even all planets.

We all assume we know what life is, but the more scientists learn about the living world - from protocells to brains, from zygotes to pandemic viruses - the harder they find it to define exactly what it is and what it isn't. What is life? In this riveting and thought-provoking book, Carl Zimmer explores the question by journeying to the edges of life in every direction, from viruses to computer intelligence, from its origins on earth to the search for extra-terrestrial life and the strange experiments that have attempted to recreate life from scratch in the lab. The question is not only a scientific issue; it hangs over some of society's most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Whether he is handling pythons or searching for hibernating bats, Zimmer investigates life in its most unfamiliar forms. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results, explores our cultural obsession with Dr. Frankestein's monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive. The result is an entirely gripping exploration of one of the most crucial questions of all: the meaning of life.

This volume examines the latest scientific and technological developments likely to shape our post-human future. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the author argues that we stand at the precipice of an evolutionary change caused by genetic engineering and anatomically embedded digital and informational technologies. The author delves into current scientific initiatives that will lead to the emergence of super smart individuals with unique creative capacities. He draws on technology, psychology and philosophy to consider humans-as-they-are relative to autonomy, creativity, and their place in a future shared with 'post humans.' The author discusses the current state of bioethics and technology law, both which policymakers, beset by a torrent of revolutionary advances in bioengineering, are attempting to steer. Significantly, Carvalko addresses why we must both preserve the narratives that brought us to this moment and continue to express our humanity through, music, art, and literature, to ensure that, as a uniquely creative species, we don't simply vanish in the ether of an evolution brought about by our own technology.

Neil Messer brings together a range of theoretical and practical questions raised by current research on the human brain: questions about both the 'ethics of neuroscience' and the 'neuroscience of ethics'. While some of these are familiar to theologians, others have been more or less ignored hitherto, and the field of neuroethics as a whole has received little theological attention. Drawing on both theological ethics and the science-and-theology field, Messer discusses cognitive-scientific and neuroscientific studies of religion, arguing that they do not give grounds to dismiss theological perspectives on the human self. He examines a representative range of topics across the whole field of neuroethics, including consciousness, the self and the value of human life; the neuroscience of morality; determinism, freewill and moral responsibility; and the ethics of cognitive enhancement.

What rational justification is there for conceiving of all living things as possessing inherent worth? In "Respect for Nature," Paul Taylor draws on biology, moral philosophy, and environmental science to defend a biocentric environmental ethic in which all life has value. Without making claims for the moral rights of plants and animals, he offers a reasoned alternative to the prevailing anthropocentric view--that the natural environment and its wildlife are valued only as objects for human use or enjoyment. "Respect for Nature" provides both a full account of the biological conditions for life--human or otherwise--and a comprehensive view of the complex relationship between human beings and the whole of nature.

This classic book remains a valuable resource for philosophers, biologists, and environmentalists alike--along with all those who care about the future of life on Earth. A new foreword by Dale Jamieson looks at how the original 1986 edition of "Respect for Nature" has shaped the study of environmental ethics, and shows why the work remains relevant to debates today.

For decades, the field of bioethics has shaped the way we think about ethical problems in science, technology, and medicine. But its traditional emphasis on individual interests such as doctor-patient relationships, informed consent, and personal autonomy is minimally helpful in confronting the social and political challenges posed by new human biotechnologies such as assisted reproduction, human genetic modification, and DNA forensics. Beyond Bioethics addresses these provocative issues from an emerging standpoint that is attentive to race, gender, class, disability, privacy, and notions of democracy-a "new biopolitics." This authoritative volume provides an overview for those grappling with the profound dilemmas posed by these developments. It brings together the work of cutting-edge thinkers from diverse fields of study and public engagement, all of them committed to this new perspective grounded in social justice and public interest values.

This comprehensive book covers the research, theory, policy and practice context of unusual reproduction using third parties. Olga Van den Akker details the psychological adaptation required to continuing changes in public opinion, advances in technologies and new legislations in surrogate motherhood and discusses their impact at an individual, societal and global level. She describes the competing interests and interactions between legal, organisational, personal, social, psychological and cultural issues in relation to biological and genetic surrogate and commissioning parenthood. This book is intended for professionals, practitioners, academics and students interested in the complexities of unusual reproduction using multidisciplinary perspectives.

Pressing ethical issues are at the foreground of newfound knowledge of how the brain works, how the brain fails, and how information about its functions and failures are addressed, recorded and shared. In Neuroethics: Anticipating the Future, a distinguished group of contributors tackle current critical questions and anticipate the issues on the horizon. What new balances should be struck between diagnosis and prediction, or invasive and non-invasive interventions, given the rapid advances in neuroscience? Are new criteria needed for the clinical definition of death for those eligible for organ donation? What educational, social and medical opportunities will new neuroscience discoveries bring to the children of tomorrow? As data from emerging technologies are made available on public databases, what frameworks will maximize benefits while ensuring privacy of health information? How is the environment shaping humans, and humans shaping the environment? These challenging questions and other future-looking neuroethical concerns are discussed in depth. Written by eminent scholars from diverse disciplines - neurology and neuroscience, ethics, law, public health, and philosophy - this new volume on neuroethics sets out the conditions for active consideration. It is essential reading for the fields of neuroethics, neurosciences and psychology, and an invaluable resource for physicians in neurology and neurosurgery, psychiatry, paediatrics, and rehabilitation medicine, academics in humanities and law, and health policy makers.

Sport is often thought of as simply "games," but it can in fact be much more. Sport can be responsible for guiding social justice movements, igniting city-wide riots, uniting countries, permanently injuring youth, revolutionizing views about race, gender and class, and producing several of the most successful global industries. Reports of ethical crises in athletics are constant fodder for popular attention, whether performance enhancing drugs in baseball, corruption in college athletics, the epidemic of brain damage among NFL players, and others too numerous to mention. As a proxy for social concerns, we naturally think of sport in inherently moral terms. Yet we can hardly define the term "sport," or agree on acceptable levels of sporting risk, or determine clear roles and responsibilities for fans, players, coaches, owners, media and health care personnel. Bringing together 27 of the most essential recent articles from philosophy, history, sociology, medicine, and law, this collection explores intersections of sports and ethics and brings attention to the immense role of sports in shaping and reflecting social values.

Medical innovation as it stands today is fundamentally unsustainable. There is a widening gap between what biomedical research promises and the impact that it is currently achieving, in terms of patient benefit and health system improvement. This book highlights the global problem of the ineffective translation of bioscience innovation into health system improvements and its consequences, analyses the underlying causative factors and provides powerful prescriptions for change to close the gap. It contrasts the progress in biomedicine with other areas of scientific and technological endeavour, such as information technology, in which there are faster and more reliable returns for society. The author's career has spanned pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and health informatics and he draws lessons from a host of case examples in which bottlenecks have prevented progress, such as in dementia and antibiotic-resistant infections, and from many in which these barriers have been overcome, such as HIV therapy and targeted cancer treatment. The new era of precision medicine holds the greatest promise of closing this 'innovation gap'. Along with techniques such as open innovation and adaptive development, powerful new genomics and digital health tools are poised to transform the productivity of life sciences. Bioscience-Lost in Translation? lays out a fresh and provocative strategy for advancing the innovation process, shaping the right policy environment and building an ecosystem to deliver the 21st century cures that are urgently needed.

This book is a set of recommendations from the Bioethics Commission in response to a request from President Obama to review the ethical issues associated with the conduct and implications of neuroscience research; and President Obama's request related to the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. Specifically the President asked the Bioethics Commission to "identify proactively a set of core ethical standards both to guide neuroscience research and to address some of the ethical dilemmas that may be raised by the application of neuroscience research findings." This book focuses on the integration of ethics into neuroscience research across the life of a research endeavor; and on the analysis on three particularly controversial topics that illustrate the ethical tensions and societal implications of advancing neuroscience and technology: cognitive enhancement, consent capacity, and neuroscience and the legal system. The book seeks to clarify the scientific landscape, identify common ground, and recommend ethical paths forward.

This book examines all aspects of narrative medicine and its value in ensuring that, in an age of evidence-based medicine defined by clinical trials, numbers, and probabilities, clinical science is firmly embedded in the medical humanities in order to foster the understanding of clinical cases and the delivery of excellent patient care. The medical humanities address what happens to us when we are affected by a disease and narrative medicine is an interdisciplinary approach that emphasizes the importance of patient narratives in bridging various divides, including those between health care professionals and patients. The book covers the genesis of the medical humanities and of narrative medicine and explores all aspects of their role in improving healthcare. It describes how narrative medicine is therapeutic for the patient, enhances the patient-doctor relationship, and allows the identification, via patients' stories, of the feelings and experiences that are characteristic for each disease. Furthermore, it explains how to use narrative medicine as a real scientific tool. Narrative Medicine will be of value for all caregivers: physicians, nurses, healthcare managers, psychotherapists, counselors, and social workers. "Maria Giulia Marini takes a unique and innovative approach to narrative medicine. She sees it as offering a bridge - indeed a variety of different bridges - between clinical care and 'humanitas'. With a sensitive use of mythology, literature and metaphor on the one hand, and scientific studies on the other, she shows how the guiding concept of narrative might bring together the fragmented parts of the medical enterprise". John Launer, Honorary Consultant, Tavistock Clinic, London UK

Since World War II, the biological and technological have been fusing and merging in new ways, resulting in the loss of a clear distinction between the two. This entanglement of biology with technology isn't new, but the pervasiveness of that integration is staggering, as is the speed at which the two have been merging in recent decades. As this process permeates more of everyday life, the urgent necessity arises to rethink both biology and technology. Indeed, the human body can no longer be regarded either as a bounded entity or as a naturally given and distinct part of an unquestioned whole. Bits of Life assumes a posthuman definition of the body. It is grounded in questions about today's biocultures, which pertain neither to humanist bodily integrity nor to the anthropological assumption that human bodies are the only ones that matter. Editors Anneke Smelik and Nina Lykke aid in mapping changes and transformations and in striking a middle road between the metaphor and the material. In exploring current reconfigurations of bodies and embodied subjects, the contributors pursue a technophilic, yet critical, path while articulating new and thoroughly appraised ethical standards.

Research on human beings saves countless lives, but has at times harmed the participants. To what degree then should government regulate science, and how? The horrors of Nazi concentration camp experiments and the egregious Tuskegee syphilis study led the US government, in 1974, to establish Research Ethics Committees, known as Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to oversee research on humans. The US now has over 4,000 IRBs, which examine yearly tens of billions of dollars of research - all studies on people involving diseases, from cancer to autism, and behavior. Yet ethical violations persist. At the same time, critics have increasingly attacked these committees for delaying or blocking important studies. Partly, science is changing, and the current system has not kept up. Since the regulations were first conceived 40 years ago, research has burgeoned 30-fold. Studies often now include not a single university, but multiple institutions, and 40 separate IRBs thus need to approve a single project. One committee might approve a study quickly, while others require major changes, altering the scientific design, and making the comparison of data between sites difficult. Crucial dilemmas thus emerge of whether the current system should be changed, and if so, how. Yet we must first understand the status quo to know how to improve it. Unfortunately, these committees operate behind closed doors, and have received relatively little in-depth investigation. Robert Klitzman thus interviewed 45 IRB leaders and members about how they make decisions. What he heard consistently surprised him. This book reveals what Klitzman learned, providing rare glimpses into the conflicts and complexities these individuals face, defining science, assessing possible future risks and benefits of studies, and deciding how much to trust researchers - illuminating, more broadly, how we view and interpret ethics in our lives today, and perceive and use power. These committees reflect many of the most vital tensions of our time - concerning science and human values, individual freedom, government control, and industry greed. Ultimately, as patients, scientists, or subjects, the decisions of these men and women affect us all.

An argument against the "lifeboat ethic" of contemporary bioethics that views medicine as a commodity rather than a tradition of care and caring. Bioethics emerged in the 1960s from a conviction that physicians and researchers needed the guidance of philosophers in handling the issues raised by technological advances in medicine. It blossomed as a response to the perceived doctor-knows-best paternalism of the traditional medical ethic and today plays a critical role in health policies and treatment decisions. Bioethics claimed to offer a set of generally applicable, universally accepted guidelines that would simplify complex situations. In Thieves of Virtue, Tom Koch contends that bioethics has failed to deliver on its promises. Instead, he argues, bioethics has promoted a view of medicine as a commodity whose delivery is predicated not on care but on economic efficiency. At the heart of bioethics, Koch writes, is a "lifeboat ethic" that assumes "scarcity" of medical resources is a natural condition rather than the result of prior economic, political, and social choices. The idea of natural scarcity requiring ethical triage signaled a shift in ethical emphasis from patient care and the physician's responsibility for it to neoliberal accountancies and the promotion of research as the preeminent good. The solution to the failure of bioethics is not a new set of simplistic principles. Koch points the way to a transformed medical ethics that is humanist, responsible, and defensible.

A cognitive science perspective on scientific development, drawing on philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and computational modeling. Many disciplines, including philosophy, history, and sociology, have attempted to make sense of how science works. In this book, Paul Thagard examines scientific development from the interdisciplinary perspective of cognitive science. Cognitive science combines insights from researchers in many fields: philosophers analyze historical cases, psychologists carry out behavioral experiments, neuroscientists perform brain scans, and computer modelers write programs that simulate thought processes. Thagard develops cognitive perspectives on the nature of explanation, mental models, theory choice, and resistance to scientific change, considering disbelief in climate change as a case study. He presents a series of studies that describe the psychological and neural processes that have led to breakthroughs in science, medicine, and technology. He shows how discoveries of new theories and explanations lead to conceptual change, with examples from biology, psychology, and medicine. Finally, he shows how the cognitive science of science can integrate descriptive and normative concerns; and he considers the neural underpinnings of certain scientific concepts.

About the Contributor(s): R. Dennis Macaleer has a unique combination of education and experience. He holds an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from Princeton University, master's degrees from Fuller Seminary and Princeton Seminary, a Doctor of Ministry degree in marriage and family, and a PhD in bioethics. He has pastored several churches spanning two continents over a thirty-five year period and currently pastors a church in suburban Pittsburgh.

This book gives a theologically satisfying discussion of health and disease that addresses key areas neglected by medical ethicists. We use such words as "health," "disease," and "illness" all the time without stopping to consider exactly what we understand by them. Yet their meanings are far from straightforward, and disagreements over them have important practical consequences in health care and bioethics. In this book, Neil Messer develops a distinctive and innovative theological account of these concepts. He engages in earnest with debates in the philosophy of medicine and disability studies and draws on a wide array of theological resources including Barth, Bonhoeffer, Aquinas, and recent disability theologies. By enabling us to understand health in the wider perspective of the flourishing and ultimate destiny of human beings, Messer's Flourishing sheds new light on a range of practical bioethical issues and dilemmas.

Since the 1980s, MRI scanners have told us much about brain function and played an important role in the clinical diagnosis of a number of conditions - both in the brain and the rest of the body. Their routine use has made the diagnosis of brain tumours and brain damage both quicker and more accurate. However, some neuroscientific advances, in particular those that relate specifically to the mind have provoked excitement and discussion in a number of disciplines. One of the most thought provoking developments in recent neuroscience has been the progress made with 'mind-reading'. There seems nothing more private than one's thoughts, some of which we might choose to share with others, and some not. Yet, until now, little has been published on the particular issue of privacy in relation to 'brain' or 'mind' reading.
I know what you're thinking provides a fascinating, interdisciplinary account of the neuroscientific evidence on 'mind reading', as well as a thorough analysis of both legal and moral accounts of privacy. It brings together leading academics from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and law. The book considers such issues as the use of imaging to detect awareness in those considered to be in a vegetative state. It looks at issues of mental imaging and national security, the neurobiology of violence, and issues regarding diminished responsibility in criminals, and thus reduced punishment. It also considers how the use of neuroimaging can and should be regulated.
Providing a ground breaking exploration of how brain imaging technologies can throw light on our mental capacities, states, and acts, this is an important new book for psychologists, neuroscientists, bioethicists, philosophers, and lawyers.

Since the early 2000s, the field of Responsible Conduct of Research has become widely recognized as essential to scientific education, investigation, and training. At present, research institutions with public funding are expected to have some minimal training and education in RCR for their graduate students, fellows and trainees. These institutions also are expected to have a system in place for investigating and reporting misconduct in research or violations of regulations in research with human subjects, or in their applications to federal agencies for funding. Public scrutiny of the conduct of scientific researchers remains high. Media reports of misconduct scandals, biased research, violations of human research ethics rules, and moral controversies in research occur on a weekly basis. Since the 2009 publication of the 2nd edition of Shamoo and Resnik's Responsible Conduct of Research, there has been a vast expansion in the information, knowledge, methods, and diagnosis of problems related to RCR and the multitude of ethical issues of human subject protections. With the climate surrounding research conduct always shifting, developments in the field make an updated edition a necessity. All chapters have been revised and reflect the most current RCR landscape. New or further-developed topics include social responsibility and misconduct in social sciences, climate-change research, authorship, and peer review. Updates include new information on research involving human subjects or "vulnerable" biological subjects, as well as genetic research. Just like in previous editions, all chapters contain recent case studies and legal examples of various subjects.

Lively Capital is an urgent and important collection of essays addressing the reconfigured relations between the life sciences and the market. Exploring the ground where social and cultural anthropology intersect with science and technology studies, prominent scholars investigate the relationship of biotechnology to ethics, governance, and markets, as well as the new legal, social, cultural, and institutional mechanisms emerging to regulate biotechnology. The contributors examine genomics, pharmaceutical marketing, intellectual property, environmental science, clinical trials, patient advocacy, and other such matters as they are playing out in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Lively Capital is not only about the commercialization of the life sciences, but their institutional histories, epistemic formations, and systems of valuation. It is also about the lively affects—the emotions and desires—involved when technologies and research impinge on experiences of embodiment, kinship, identity, disability, citizenship, accumulation, and dispossession. At stake in the commodification of the life sciences are opportunities to intervene in and adjudicate matters of health, life, and death.Contributors. Timothy Choy, Joseph Dumit, Michael M. J. Fischer, Kim Fortun, Mike Fortun, Donna Haraway, Sheila Jasanoff, Wen-Hua Kuo, Andrew Lakoff, Kristin Peterson, Chloe Silverman, Elta Smith, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Travis J. Tanner