An investigation into standards, the invisible infrastructures of our technical, moral, social, and physical worlds. Standards are the means by which we construct realities. There are established standards for professional accreditation, the environment, consumer products, animal welfare, the acceptable stress for highway bridges, healthcare, education-for almost everything. We are surrounded by a vast array of standards, many of which we take for granted but each of which has been and continues to be the subject of intense negotiation. In this book, Lawrence Busch investigates standards as "recipes for reality." Standards, he argues, shape not only the physical world around us but also our social lives and even our selves. Busch shows how standards are intimately connected to power-that they often serve to empower some and disempower others. He outlines the history of formal standards and describes how modern science came to be associated with the moral-technical project of standardization of both people and things. Busch suggests guidelines for developing fair, equitable, and effective standards. Taking a uniquely integrated and comprehensive view of the subject, Busch shows how standards for people and things are inextricably linked, how standards are always layered (even if often addressed serially), and how standards are simultaneously technical, social, moral, legal, and ontological devices.

In "Becoming Undone," Elizabeth Grosz addresses three related concepts--life, politics, and art--by exploring the implications of Charles Darwin's account of the evolution of species. Challenging characterizations of Darwin's work as a form of genetic determinism, Grosz shows that his writing reveals an insistence on the difference between natural selection and sexual selection, the principles that regulate survival and attractiveness, respectively. Sexual selection complicates natural selection by introducing aesthetic factors and the expression of individual will, desire, or pleasure. Grosz explores how Darwin's theory of sexual selection transforms philosophy, our understanding of humanity in its male and female forms, our ideas of political relations, and our concepts of art. Connecting the naturalist's work to the writings of Bergson, Deleuze, and Irigaray, she outlines a postmodern Darwinism that understands all of life as forms of competing and coordinating modes of openness. Although feminists have been suspicious of the concepts of nature and biology central to Darwin's work, Grosz proposes that his writings are a rich resource for developing a more politicized, radical, and far-reaching feminist understanding of matter, nature, biology, time, and becoming.

Saving lives versus taking lives: These are the stark terms in which the public regards human embryo research--a battleground of extremes, a war between science and ethics. Such a simplistic dichotomy, encouraged by vociferous opponents of abortion and proponents of medical research, is precisely what Jane Maienschein seeks to counter with this book. "Whose View of Life?" brings the current debates into sharper focus by examining developments in stem cell research, cloning, and embryology in historical and philosophical context and by exploring legal, social, and ethical issues at the heart of what has become a political controversy.

Drawing on her experience as a researcher, teacher, and congressional fellow, Jane Maienschein provides historical and contemporary analysis to aid understanding of the scientific and social forces that got us where we are today. For example, she explains the long-established traditions behind conflicting views of how life begins--at conception or gradually, in the course of development. She prepares us to engage a major question of our day: How are we, as a 21st-century democratic society, to navigate a course that is at the same time respectful of the range of competing views of life, built on the strongest possible basis of scientific knowledge, and still able to respond to the momentous opportunities and challenges presented to us by modern biology? Maienschein's multidisciplinary perspective will provide a starting point for further attempts to answer this question.

Ethical Issues in Biotechnology is the first textbook of its kind, written collaboratively by a philosopher and a biologist to provide undergraduate students with a comprehensive, accessible introduction to the ethical and scientific fundamentals of biotechnology. Engaging the ethics and the science side by side, the text addresses pressing questions in agricultural, food, and animal biotechnology; human genetics; gene therapy; human cloning; and stem cell research. A general introduction to both the moral philosophy and fundamentals of genetics is enhanced throughout the text with section-specific introductions addressing the particular philosophical and scientific challenges posed by the topic under consideration. Diagrams and drawings, study cases, liberal use of practical examples, and suggestions for further reading make the text an ideal resource for a broad range of students interested in issues and questions lying at the intersection of philosophy and genetics.

Die Legalisierung der Beihilfe zum Suizid bringt tiefgreifende gesellschaftliche Veranderungen mit sich. Das bisherige Selbstverstandnis von Medizin und Pflege wird in Frage gestellt und es wird eine neue Auseinandersetzung mit dem Leid am Lebensende erfordern. Das Buch bietet einen UEberblick uber die ethischen Aspekte und die internationalen Entwicklungen der Suizidassistenz sowie uber die Spannungsfelder, die sich durch die Legalisierung der Beihilfe zum Suizid aus der Sicht von Palliative Care ergeben. Die Entwicklungen in anderen Landern, in denen Suizidassistenz schon langer legal ist, geben Anlass zur Sorge. Es wird entscheidend sein, wie gut es gelingt, Rahmenbedingungen festzulegen, die gewahrleisten, dass der Entschluss fur einen assistierten Suizid frei von Druck getroffen wird. Das Buch richtet sich an alle Berufsgruppen, die Patienten am Lebensende behandeln oder betreuen und schwierige Entscheidungen treffen mussen, sowie an ethischen Themen Interessierte.

In Animals as Biotechnology sociologist Richard Twine places the question of human/animal relations at the heart of sustainability and climate change debates. The book is shaped by the emergence of two contradictory trends within our approach to nonhuman animals: the biotechnological turn in animal sciences, which aims to increase the efficiency and profitability of meat and dairy production; and the emerging field of critical animal studies - mostly in the humanities and social sciences - which works to question the nature of our relations with other animals. The first part of the book focuses on ethics, examining critically the dominant paradigms of bioethics and power relations between human and non-human. The second part considers animal biotechnology and political economy, examining commercialisation and regulation. The final part of the book centres on discussions of sustainability, limits and an examination of the prospects for animal ethics if biotechnology becomes part of the dominant agricultural paradigm. Twine concludes by considering whether growing calls to reduce our consumption of meat/dairy products in the face of climate change threats are in fact complicit with an anthropocentric understanding of sustainability and that what is needed is a more fundamental ethical and political questioning of relations and distinctions between humans, animals and nature.

Dass die Wurde des Menschen unantastbar sei, stellt eine der popularsten, aber auch eine der umstrittensten Aussagen des Grundgesetzes dar. Dabei wird eine sachorientierte Diskussion oft durch mehr oder minder unausgewiesene semantische und historische Annahmen blockiert. Aus dieser Beobachtung heraus wird zum einen uberlegt, wie sich unterschiedliche Bedeutungen des Ausdrucks "Menschenwurde" unterscheiden und ethischen Fragestellungen resp. Positionen zuordnen liessen. Zum anderen wird die Einfuhrung des Ausdrucks in das Verfassungsrecht nachgezeichnet. Das Hauptaugenmerk gilt dabei Art.1 Abs. 1 Grundgesetz, dessen Gehalt in Auseinandersetzung mit der bisherigen Rechtsprechung rekonstruiert wird."

This collection of essays addresses an important cross-section of issues in contemporary bioethics. It represents an essential contribution to global bioethics anchored and grounded on a continent most remarkable for its biological, cultural and linguistic diversity. It is a fitting beginning to addressing the observable absence of African voices in the rather lively global discourses of bioethics. The issues treated here include a discussion of the fundamental principles of bioethics; the place of African thought in medical research ethics, traditional medicine, and assisted conception; the moral status of embryonic stem cells; research with vulnerable human beings; and sexual and reproductive health in Africa. It explores a paradigm of how the universal and the particular may be blended, how global bioethics can remain firmly anchored and committed locally, regionally, continentally.