What will it mean for society if science enables us to choose a future child whose health, athletic ability or intelligence is predetermined? This future is becoming ever more likely with the latest developments in human reproduction -- but concerns are growing about the implications. New procedures making possible heritable genetic modifications such as genome editing open the door to 'sanitized' selective eugenics; but these practices have some unnerving similarities to the discredited eugenic programmes of early twentieth-century regimes. A Christian perspective based on Scripture gives us the resources we urgently need to evaluate both current and future selection practices. Calum MacKellar offers an accessible, inter-disciplinary analysis, blending science, history and Christian theology. This book will enable you to become fully informed about the new scientific developments in human reproduction - developments that will affect us all.

In a critical intervention into the bioethics debate over human enhancement, philosopher Melinda Hall tackles the claim that the expansion and development of human capacities is a moral obligation. Hall draws on French philosopher Michel Foucault to reveal and challenge the ways disability is central to the conversation. The Bioethics of Enhancement includes a close reading and analysis of the last century of enhancement thinking and contemporary transhumanist thinkers, the strongest promoters of the obligation to pursue enhancement technology. With specific attention to the work of bioethicists Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, the book challenges the rhetoric and strategies of enhancement thinking. These include the desire to transcend the body and decide who should live in future generations through emerging technologies such as genetic selection. Hall provides new analyses rethinking both the philosophy of enhancement and disability, arguing that enhancement should be a matter of social and political interventions, not genetic and biological interventions. Hall concludes that human vulnerability and difference should be cherished rather than extinguished. This book will be of interest to academics working in bioethics and disability studies, along with those working in Continental philosophy (especially on Foucault).

This volume links three different theoretical approaches that have a common focus on the relationship between biopolitics and bioethics. This collection of papers can be categorized into different domains that are representative of the contemporary usage of biopolitics as a concept. On the one hand, several chapters develop a clear and up-to-date understanding of the primary sources of the concept and related theories of Agamben, Negri or Foucault and approach the question of relevance within the field of bioethics. Another group of papers apply the philosophical concepts and theories of biopolitics (biopower, Homo Sacer, biocitizenship) on very specific currently debated bioethical issues. Some scholars rely on the more mundane understanding of (bio)politics and investigate how its relationship with bioethics could be philosophically conceptualized. Additionally, this work also contains papers that follow a more legally oriented analysis on the effects of contemporary biopolitics on human rights and European law. The authors are philosophers, legal scholars or bioethicists. The major strength of this volume is to provide the reader with major insights and orientation in these different contemporary usages of the concept and theories of biopolitics, within the context of its various ethically relevant applications.

Quality, as exemplified by Quality-of-life (QoL) assessment, is frequently discussed among health care professionals and often invoked as a goal for improvement, but somehow rarely defined, even as it is regularly assessed. It is understood that some medical patients have a better QoL than others, but should the QoL achieved be compared to an ideal state, or is it too personal and subjective to gauge? Can a better understanding of the concept help health care systems deliver services more effectively? Is QoL worth measuring at all? Integrating concepts from psychology, philosophy, neurocognition, and linguistics, this book attempts to answer these complex questions. It also breaks down the cognitive-linguistic components that comprise the judgment of quality, including description, evaluation, and valuations, and applies them to issues specific to individuals with chronic medical illness. In this context, quality/QoL assessment becomes an essential contributor to ethical practice, a critical step towards improving the nature of social interactions. The author considers linear, non-linear, and complexity-based models in analyzing key methodology and content issues in health-related QoL assessment. This book is certain to stimulate debate in the research and scientific communities. Its forward-looking perspective takes great strides toward promoting a common cognitive-linguistic model of how the judgment of quality occurs, thereby contributing important conceptual and empirical tools to its varied applications, including QoL assessment.

Focusing on the period between the 1970s and the present, Life as Surplus is a pointed and important study of the relationship between politics, economics, science, and cultural values in the United States today. Melinda Cooper demonstrates that the history of biotechnology cannot be understood without taking into account the simultaneous rise of neoliberalism as a political force and an economic policy. From the development of recombinant DNA technology in the 1970s to the second Bush administration's policies on stem cell research, Cooper connects the utopian polemic of free-market capitalism with growing internal contradictions of the commercialized life sciences. The biotech revolution relocated economic production at the genetic, microbial, and cellular level. Taking as her point of departure the assumption that life has been drawn into the circuits of value creation, Cooper underscores the relations between scientific, economic, political, and social practices. In penetrating analyses of Reagan-era science policy, the militarization of the life sciences, HIV politics, pharmaceutical imperialism, tissue engineering, stem cell science, and the pro-life movement, the author examines the speculative impulses that have animated the growth of the bioeconomy. At the very core of the new post-industrial economy is the transformation of biological life into surplus value. Life as Surplus offers a clear assessment of both the transformative, therapeutic dimensions of the contemporary life sciences and the violence, obligation, and debt servitude crystallizing around the emerging bioeconomy.

Contemporary Debates in Bioethics features a timely collection of highly readable, debate-style arguments contributed by many of today s top bioethics scholars, focusing on core bioethical concerns of the twenty-first century. * Written in an engaging, debate-style format for accessibility to non-specialists * Features general introductions to each topic that precede scholarly debates * Presents the latest, cutting-edge thoughts on relevant bioethics ideas, arguments, and debates

Currently, the ethics infrastructure - from medical and scientific training to the scrutiny of ethics committees - focuses on trying to reform informed consent to do a job which it is simply not capable of doing. Consent, or choice, is not an effective ethical tool in public ethics and is particularly problematic in the governance of genetics. Heather Widdows suggests using alternative and additional ethical tools and argues that if individuals are to flourish it is necessary to recognise and respect communal and public goods as well as individual goods. To do this she suggests a two-step process - the 'ethical toolbox'. First the harms and goods of the particular situation are assessed and then appropriate practices are put in place to protect goods and prevent harms. This debate speaks to core concerns of contemporary public ethics and suggests a means to identify and prioritise public and common goods.

Biotechnology crop production area increased from 1.7 million hectares to 148 million hectares worldwide between 1996 to 2010. While genetically modified food is a contentious issue, the debates are usually limited to health and environmental concerns, ignoring the broader questions of social control that arise when food production methods become corporate-owned intellectual property. Drawing on legal documents and dozens of interviews with farmers and other stakeholders, Corporate Crops covers four case studies based around litigation between biotechnology corporations and farmers. Pechlaner investigates the extent to which the proprietary aspects of biotechnologies-from patents on seeds to a plethora of new rules and contractual obligations associated with the technologies-are reorganizing crop production. The lawsuits include patent infringement litigation launched by Monsanto against a Saskatchewan canola farmer who, in turn, claimed his crops had been involuntarily contaminated by the company's GM technology; a class action application by two Saskatchewan organic canola farmers launched against Monsanto and Aventis (later Bayer) for the loss of their organic market due to contamination with GMOs; and two cases in Mississippi in which Monsanto sued farmers for saving seeds containing its patented GM technology. Pechlaner argues that well-funded corporate lawyers have a decided advantage over independent farmers in the courts and in creating new forms of power and control in agricultural production. Corporate Crops demonstrates the effects of this intersection between the courts and the fields where profits, not just a food supply, are reaped.

Bioethics is the philosophical study of the ethical controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, philosophy, and theology. This book presents research in the expansive field of bioethics including biomedical ethics in obstetrics, ethical decision making in the health care system, the feasibility of using human oocytes for stem cell research, as well as mandatory circumcision in Sub-Saharan Africa to prevent HIV and AIDS and environmental ethics to preserve the world for future generations.

This collection of essays, commissioned by the President's Council on Bioethics, explores a fundamental concept crucial to today's discourse in law and ethics in general and in bioethics in particular. Since its formation in 2001, the council has frequently used the term "human dignity" in its discussions and reports. In this volume scholars from the fields of philosophy, medicine and medical ethics, law, political science, and public policy address the issue of what the concept of "human dignity" entails and its proper role in bioethical controversies. Human Dignity and Bioethics is an attempt to clarify a controversial concept, one that is a critical component in the decisions of policymakers. Contributors: Adam Schulman, F. Daniel Davis, Daniel C. Dennett, Robert P. Kraynak, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, Patricia S. Churchland, Gilbert Meilaender, Holmes Rolston III, Charles Rubin, Nick Bostrom, Richard John Neuhaus, Peter Augustine Lawler, Diana Schaub, Leon R. Kass, Susan M. Shell, Martha Nussbaum, David Gelernter, Patrick Lee, Robert P. George, Paul Weithman, Daniel P. Sulmasy, O.F.M., Rebecca Dresser, and Edmund D. Pellegrino.

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.

What do you think about cloning, stem cell research, brain enhancement, or doing experiments on newly dead patients? Read Smart Mice, Not so Smart People and you'll know what Art Caplan thinks. But this assortment of pithy, provocative opinions on all things bioethical does more than simply give you a piece of the author's mind--it also invites and even dares you to make up your own mind. In his typical style, Caplan--one of the most sought-after bioethicists of our time--provokes discussion on issues at the center of the new genetics, cloning in the laboratory and in the media, stem cell research, experiments on human subjects, blood donation and organ transplantation, and healthcare delivery. Are new developments in these areas good or bad? As an engaged citizen in a democratic society, it is your responsibility to decide. This book will help you do it.

In Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Marti Kheel explores the underlying worldview of nature ethics, offering an alternative ecofeminist perspective. She focuses on four prominent representatives of holist philosophy: two early conservationists (Theodore Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold) and two contemporary philosophers (Holmes Rolston III, and transpersonal ecologist Warwick Fox). Kheel argues that in directing their moral allegiance to abstract constructs (e.g. species, the ecosystem, or the transpersonal Self) these influential nature theorists represent a masculinist orientation that devalues concern for individual animals. Seeking to heal the divisions among the seemingly disparate movements and philosophies of feminism, animal advocacy, environmental ethics, and holistic health, Kheel proposes an ecofeminist philosophy that underscores the importance of empathy and care for individual beings as well as larger wholes.

This anthology of original essays by leading thinkers in the field gathers together in one place voices from diverse theological and practical commitments. Unlike other publications on Jewish bioethics, it adopts an explicitly pluralistic stance. The book addresses tension between the 'quality of life' and the 'sanctity of life' issues, and will be of interest to lay readers, graduate students of bioethics, and rabbis.

Food makes philosophers of us all. Death does the same . . . but death comes only once . . . and choices about food come many times each day. In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, and human history. Will genetically modified food feed the poor or destroy the environment? Is it a threat to our health? Is the assumed healthfulness of organic food a myth or a reality? The answers to these and other questions are engagingly pursued in this substantive collection, the first of its kind to address the broad range of philosophical, sociological, political, scientific, and technological issues surrounding the ethics of food.

Providing the first account of the story behind genetically engineered plants, Paul F. Lurquin covers the controversial birth of the field, its sudden death, phoenixlike reemergence, and ultimate triumph as not only a legitimate field of science but a new tool of multinational corporate interests. In addition, Lurquin looks ahead to the potential impact this revolutionary technology will have on human welfare.

As Lurquin shows, it was the intense competition between international labs that resulted in the creation of the first transgenic plants. Two very different approaches to plant genetic engineering came to fruition at practically the same time, and Lurquin's account demonstrates how cross-fertilization between the two areas was critical to success. The scientists concerned were trying to tackle some very basic scientific problems and did not foresee the way that corporations would apply their methodology. With detailed accounts of the work of individual scientists and teams all over the world, Lurquin pieces together a remarkable account.

The Future of the Disabled in Liberal Society questions developments in human genetic research from the perspective of persons with mental disabilities and their families. Hans S. Reinders argues that when we use terms such as "disease" and "defect" to describe conditions that genetic engineering might well eliminate, we may also be assuming that disabled lives are deplorable and horrific. Reinders points out that the possibility of preventing disabled lives is at odds with our commitment to the full inclusion of disabled citizens in society. The tension between these different perspectives is of concern to all of us as genetic testing procedures proliferate. Reinders warns that preventative uses of human genetics might even become a threat to the social security and welfare benefits that help support disabled persons and their families. Reinders also argues that this conflict cannot be resolved or controlled on the level of public morality. Because a liberal society makes a commitment to individual freedom and choice, its members can consider the diagnostic and therapeutic uses of human genetics as options available to individual citizens. A liberal society will defend reproductive freedom as a matter of principle. Citizens may select their offspring in accord with their own personal values. Reinders concludes that the future of the mentally disabled in liberal society will depend on the strength of our moral convictions about the value of human life, rather than on the protective force of liberal morality. One of the most important aspects of this book is Reinder's attention to parents who have come to see the task of raising a disabled child as an enriching experience. These are people who change their conceptions of success and control and, therefore, their conceptions of themselves. They come to value their disabled children for what they have to give. Even though disabled children and disabled adults present parents and society with real challenges, the rewards are just as real. This powerful critique of contemporary bioethics is sure to become required reading for those interested in human development, special education, ethics, philosophy, and theology.

The Future of the Disabled in Liberal Society questions developments in human genetic research from the perspective of persons with mental disabilities and their families. Hans S. Reinders argues that when we use terms such as “disease” and “defect” to describe conditions that genetic engineering might well eliminate, we may also be assuming that disabled lives are deplorable and horrific. Reinders points out that the possibility of preventing disabled lives is at odds with our commitment to the full inclusion of disabled citizens in society. The tension between these different perspectives is of concern to all of us as genetic testing procedures proliferate. Reinders warns that preventative uses of human genetics might even become a threat to the social security and welfare benefits that help support disabled persons and their families. Reinders also argues that this conflict cannot be resolved or controlled on the level of public morality. Because a liberal society makes a commitment to individual freedom and choice, its members can consider the diagnostic and therapeutic uses of human genetics as options available to individual citizens. A liberal society will defend reproductive freedom as a matter of principle. Citizens may select their offspring in accord with their own personal values. Reinders concludes that the future of the mentally disabled in liberal society will depend on the strength of our moral convictions about the value of human life, rather than on the protective force of liberal morality. One of the most important aspects of this book is Reinder’s attention to parents who have come to see the task of raising a disabled child as an enriching experience. These are people who change their conceptions of success and control and, therefore, their conceptions of themselves. They come to value their disabled children for what they have to give. Even though disabled children and disabled adults present parents and society with real challenges, the rewards are just as real. This powerful critique of contemporary bioethics is sure to become required reading for those interested in human development, special education, ethics, philosophy, and theology.

Cloning is one of the most hotly debated issues to have hit the world news in years. The first book of its kind. Flesh of My Flesh is a collection of articles by today's most-respected scientists, philosophers, bioethicists, theologians, and law professors about whether we should allow human cloning. The book includes historical pieces to provide background for the current debate. Religious, philosophical, and legal points of view are all represented. Flesh of My Flesh offers a fascinating and comprehensive look at this important and complex issue.

In this book noted theologian and ethicist Gilbert C. Meilaender examines how the field of bioethics has developed over the last quarter century and reconsiders some of its central concepts and arguments. Because the literature of bioethics has become increasingly less influenced by religious and theological concerns over the past three decades, it is Meilaender's specific aim to uncover and recapture the importance of theological reflection for current debates in bioethics. Meilaender suggests that the development of bioethics as a discipline in its own right has not been entirely benign. He argues that an increasing focus on public policy has obscured the importance of background beliefs about human nature and destiny, and that without drawing attention to those beliefs one cannot fully see what is at stake in many bioethical debates. Rather than seeking a minimalist consensus, Meilaender explores ethical problems surrounding the end and beginning of life in order to uncover the "soul"-that is, some of the deeper issues within bioethics that need our attention. Abortion, the issue that so often lurks just beneath the surface of bioethical argument, is discussed in the final chapter. Throughout the book Meilaender emphasizes the "soul" of all these issues -questions about who we are and what we may become, and suggests that recapturing that soul will lead us to a new appreciation of the living body as the locus of personal presence. Ethicists, theologians, and bioethicists will appreciate Body, Soul, and Bioethics for redirecting bioethical discussion away from its current focus on public policy back toward questions of metaphysical and religious significance.

From the moment medical students step into a hospital they must confront the moral implication of providing health care. In this brief textbook of medical ethics Dr. English provides a succinct yet comprehensive overview of the issues students will encounter.

The first book on active matter, an emerging field focused on programming physical materials to assemble themselves, transform autonomously, and react to information. The past few decades brought a revolution in computer software and hardware; today we are on the cusp of a materials revolution. If yesterday we programmed computers and other machines, today we program matter itself. This has created new capabilities in design, computing, and fabrication, which allow us to program proteins and bacteria, to generate self-transforming wood products and architectural details, and to create clothing from "intelligent textiles" that grow themselves. This book offers essays and sample projects from the front lines of the emerging field of active matter. Active matter and programmable materials are at the intersection of science, art, design, and engineering, with applications in fields from biology and computer science to architecture and fashion. These essays contextualize current work and explore recent research. Sample projects, generously illustrated in color, show the range of possibilities envisioned by their makers. Contributors explore the design of active material at scales from nano to micro, kilo, and even planetary. They investigate processes of self-assembly at a microscopic level; test new materials that can sense and actuate themselves; and examine the potential of active matter in the built environment and in living and artificial systems. Active Matter is an essential guide to a field that could shape the future of design.

The T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Ethics provides an ecumenical introduction to Christian ethics, its sources, methods, and applications. With contributions by theological ethicists known for their excellence in scholarship and teaching, the essays in this volume offer fresh purchase on, and an agenda for, the discipline of Christian ethics in the 21st century. The essays are organized in three sections, following an introduction that presents the four-font approach and elucidates why it is critically employed through these subsequent sections. The first section explores the sources of Christian ethics, including each of the four fonts: scripture, tradition, experience, and reason. The second section examines fundamental or basic elements of Christian ethics and covers different methods, approaches, and voices in doing Christian ethics, such as natural law, virtue ethics, conscience, responsibility, narrative, worship, and engagement with other religions. The third section addresses current moral issues in politics, medicine, economics, ecology, criminal justice and other related spheres from the perspective of Christian ethics, including war, genetics, neuroethics, end-of-life decisions, marriage, family, work, sexuality, nonhuman animals, migration, aging, policing, incarceration, capital punishment, and more.

A critical examination of translational medicine, when private risk is transferred to the public sector and university research teams become tech startups for global investors. A global shift has secretly transformed science and medicine. Starting in 2003, biomedical research in the West has been reshaped by the emergence of translational science and medicine-the idea that the aim of research is to translate findings as quickly as possible into medical products. In The Market in Mind, Mark Dennis Robinson charts this shift, arguing that the new research paradigm has turned university research teams into small biotechnology startups and their industry partners into early-stage investment firms. There is also a larger, surprising consequence from this shift: according to Robinson, translational science and medicine enable biopharmaceutical firms, as part of a broader financial strategy, to outsource the riskiest parts of research to nonprofit universities. Robinson examines the implications of this new configuration. What happens, for example, when universities absorb unknown levels of risk? Robinson argues that in the years since the global financial crisis translational science and medicine has brought about "the financialization of health." Robinson explores such topics as shareholder anxiety and industry retreat from Alzheimer's and depression research; how laboratory research is understood as health innovation even when there is no product; the emergence of investor networking events as crucial for viewing science in a market context; and the place of patients in research decisions. Although translational medicine justifies itself by the goal of relieving patients' suffering, Robinson finds patients' voices largely marginalized in translational neuroscience.

The politics of scientific advice across four environmental conflicts in Chile, when the state acted as a "neutral broker" rather than protecting the common good. In Science and Environment in Chile, Javiera Barandiaran examines the consequences for environmental governance when the state lacks the capacity to produce an authoritative body of knowledge. Focusing on the experience of Chile after it transitioned from dictatorship to democracy, she examines a series of environmental conflicts in which the state tried to act as a "neutral broker" rather than the protector of the common good. She argues that this shift in the role of the state-occurring in other countries as well-is driven in part by the political ideology of neoliberalism, which favors market mechanisms and private initiatives over the actions of state agencies. Chile has not invested in environmental science labs, state agencies with in-house capacities, or an ancillary network of trusted scientific advisers-despite the growing complexity of environmental problems and increasing popular demand for more active environmental stewardship. Unlike a high modernist "empire" state with the scientific and technical capacity to undertake large-scale projects, Chile's model has been that of an "umpire" state that purchases scientific advice from markets. After describing the evolution of Chilean regulatory and scientific institutions during the transition, Barandiaran describes four environmental crises that shook citizens' trust in government: the near-collapse of the farmed salmon industry when an epidemic killed millions of fish; pollution from a paper and pulp mill that killed off or forced out thousands of black-neck swans; a gold mine that threatened three glaciers; and five controversial mega-dams in Patagonia.