From Dolly the sheep to Frankenfood, life-saving medicines, and beyond, this insightful work describes the technology and controversy behind genetic engineering. From the publication of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in 1932 to the cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1996, the public has long been fascinated by the idea that humans may one day be able to mold or even create life. In less than 30 years, genetic engineering has itself mutated from science fiction to science fact. Supporters claim such innovations as genetically modified crops and gene therapy are poised to bring unparalleled benefits by eliminating hunger and hereditary disease, whereas critics warn the dream could easily become a nightmare. Packed with key facts and analysis, Genetic Engineering: A Reference Handbook, Second Edition provides an expert guide to the very latest discoveries in genetic engineering and genetic modification and the technology's complex ethical, scientific, and economic implications. Includes an expert guide to print and online resources on genetic engineering and related areas Features a comprehensive glossary designed for the general reader

Animal Bioethics is an important reference work for students of biomedicine and related fields, scientific researchers, and members of organizations for the protection of animal rights and welfare. The philosophical background of monistic and dualistic concepts of the human-animal relationship is considered in detail. Experimental models in drug development and pain testing are analyzed, and the translational aspect of in vivo experiments discussed. One chapter is dedicated to neuroethics, taking into account the importance of animal experiments for examining brain function. Finally, an overview of modern legislation related to animal experiments is given, the ethical basis of the principles of Good Laboratory Practice is assessed, and the importance of animal bioethics for writing scientific projects is shown.

A new way of measuring the health of a political system: by examining the health of its landscapes and ecosystems East Germany, its economy, and its society were in decline long before the country's political collapse in the late 1980s. The clues were there in the natural landscape, Arvid Nelson argues in this groundbreaking book, but policy analysts were blind to them. Had they noted the record of the leadership's values and goals manifest in the landscape, they wouldn't have hailed East Germany as a Marxist-Leninist success story. Nelson sets East German history within the context of the landscape history of two centuries to underscore how forest and ecosystem change offered a reliable barometer to the health and stability of the political system that governed them. Cold War Ecology records how East German leaders' indifference to human rights and their disregard for the landscape affected the rural economy, forests, and population. This lesson from history suggests new ways of thinking about the health of ecosystems and landscapes, Nelson shows, and he proposes assessing the stability of modern political systems based on the environment's system qualities rather than on political leaders' goals and beliefs.

This invaluable resource discusses the saftey, ethics, and regulations of developing stem cell clinical applications. Each chapter is contributed by a preeminent scientist in the field and covers such topics as clinical safety of stem cell gene therapy, the patentability of hESC technologies, international guidelines, challenges to international stem cell clinical trials, worldwide regulations including in emerging markets like China and Taiwan. Saftey, Ethics, and Regulations and the other books in the Stem Cells in Clinical Applications series will be invaluable to scientists, researchers, advanced students and clinicians working in stem cells, regenerative medicine or tissue engineering.

This compact and elegant work (equally fitting for both academic as well as the trade audiences) provides a readily accessible and highly readable overview of Bhutan's unique opportunities and challenges; all her prominent environmental legislation, regulatory statutes, ecological customs and practices, both in historic and contemporary terms. At the same time, Bionomics places the ecological context, including a section on animal rights in Bhutan, within the nation's Buddhist spiritual and ethical setting. Historic contextualization accents the book's rich accounting of every national park and scientific reserve, as well as providing up-to-the-minute climate-change related hurdles for the country. Merging the interdisciplinary sciences, engineering and humanities data in a compelling up-to-date portrait of the country, the authors have presented this dramatic compendium against the backdrop of an urgent, global ecological time-frame. It thus becomes clear that the articulated stakes for Bhutan, like her neighboring Himalayan and Indian sub-continental countries (China, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar) are immense, as the Anthropocene epoch unfolds, affecting every living being across the planet. Because Bhutan's two most rewarding revenue streams derive from the sale of hydro-electric power and from tourism, the complexities of modern pressures facing a nation that prides herself on maintaining traditional customs in what has been a uniquely isolated nation are acute.

In light of new biomedical technologies, such as artificial reproduction, stem cell research, genetic selection and design, the question of what we owe to future persons-and unborn life more generally-is as contested as ever. In A Theory of Unborn Life: From Abortion to Genetic Manipulation, author Anja J. Karnein provides a novel theory that shows how our commitments to persons can help us make sense of our obligations to unborn life. We should treat embryos that will develop into persons in anticipation of these persons. But how viable is this theory? Moreover, what does it mean to treat embryos in anticipation of the future persons they will develop into? Exploring the attractiveness of this approach for Germany and the U.S. - two countries with very different legal approaches to valuing unborn life-Karnein comes to startling conclusions to some of today's greatest ethical and legal debates. Under Karnein's theory, abortion and stem cell research are legitimate, since embryos that do not have mothers willing to continue to assist their growth have no way of developing into persons. However, Karnein also contends that where the health of embryos is threatened by third parties or even by the women carrying them, embryos need to be treated with the same care due to the children that emerge from them. In the case of genetic manipulation, it is important to respect future persons like our contemporaries, respecting their independence as individuals as well as the way they enter this world without modification. Genetic interventions are therefore only legitimate for insuring that future persons have the necessary physical and mental endowment to lead independent lives so as to be protected from being dominated by their contemporaries. Evincing polarization and dogma, Karnein's clean, philosophically-driven analysis provides a sound ethical foundation for the interpretation of any variety of legal dilemmas surrounding unborn life.

Lisa Bellantoni argues that contemporary bioethics divides into two logically incommensurable positions: a cult of rights, which identifies the worth of human life with our autonomy, and a cult of life, which identifies human worth with the possession of a soul, and thereby, of human dignity.

This book is devoted to the welfare of invertebrates, which make up 99% of animal species on earth. Addressing animal welfare, we do not often think of invertebrates; in fact we seldom consider them to be deserving of welfare evaluation. And yet we should. Welfare is a broad concern for any animal that we house, control or utilize - and we utilize invertebrates a lot. The Authors start with an emphasis on the values of non-vertebrate animals and discuss the need for a book on the present topic. The following chapters focus on specific taxa, tackling questions that are most appropriate to each one. What is pain in crustaceans, and how might we prevent it? How do we ensure that octopuses are not bored? What do bees need to thrive, pollinate our plants and give us honey? Since invertebrates have distinct personalities and some social animals have group personalities, how do we consider this? And, as in the European Union's application of welfare consideration to cephalopods, how do the practical regulatory issues play out? We have previously relegated invertebrates to the category 'things' and did not worry about their treatment. New research suggest that some invertebrates such as cephalopods and crustaceans can have pain and suffering, might also have consciousness and awareness. Also, good welfare is going to mean different things to spiders, bees, corals, etc. This book is taking animal welfare in a very different direction. Academics and students of animal welfare science, those who keep invertebrates for scientific research or in service to the goals of humans, as well as philosophers will find this work thought-provoking, instructive and informative.

Empirical studies of life science research and biotechnologies in Asia show how assemblages of life articulate bioethics governance with global moralities and reveal why the global harmonization of bioethical standards is contrived.

Through engaging case studies and clear explanations of the underlying science, this book makes the social impacts and ethical consequences of recent advances in biomedicine understandable for general readers. Recent biomedical discoveries promise considerable improvement in the quality of human life, but they also hold the potential to permanently alter society. Are the anticipated benefits worth the price we would have to pay for them? In Where Science and Ethics Meet: Dilemmas at the Frontiers of Medicine and Biology, a biochemist and a biomedical researcher who are highly experienced in explaining ethics for lay audiences present the most innovative advances in biomedicine and enable readers to develop their own opinions about the ethical and social consequences these technologies will bring. Each controversial topic in modern medicine and ethics is introduced through a hypothetical case study that highlights thorny ethical issues before explaining the key aspects of the science and technology involved and addressing the associated ethical considerations in detail. The interdisciplinary treatment of the topics makes the book relevant to students of science, medicine, ethics, law, and sociology as well as health care professionals.

Animal rights is now a concept that has achieved wide name-recognition. Vegetarianism, and even veganism, is now commonplace, representing a massive transformation in public attitudes. Fifty years ago, the concept of animal rights was almost unheard of and the animal protection movement lay dormant. Even vegetarians were regarded as, at best, cranks and, at worst, dangerous critics of the social order. Yet the late 1960s and early 1970s were a formative time for the contemporary animal rights movement. One of the most important and influential intellectual moments for animal rights occurred at this time at Oxford University among like-minded scholars who would become known as the Oxford Group. The Oxford Group and the Emergence of Animal Rights is about this little known group-a loose friendship group of primarily postgraduate philosophy students who attended the University of Oxford for a short period of time in the late 1960s. The book traces the early development of the Oxford Group and its influence on animal rights theory and activism. It also serves as a case study of how the emergence of important work and the development of new ideas can be explained, as well as how the intellectual development of participants in a friendship group is influenced by their participation in a creative community. For example, would Peter Singer have written his landmark book Animal Liberation-or anything about animal ethics-without being exposed to the other members of the Oxford Group? How would the discipline of animal ethics differ if the group had not produced their edited collection of articles, Animals, Men and Morals? Drawing on previously unpublished correspondence among and interviews with the surviving Oxford Group members, Robert Garner and Yewande Okuleye explore the social and political milieu in which the group formed to understand how such intellectual movements coalesce.

This book provides an assessment of some ethical implications of increasing life spans. Taking as a starting point the idea that to increase longevity is a form of medical enhancement, it examines the value of living longer; the means for extending life spans; the consequences of greater longevity for the fair distribution of resources and healthcare in particular.

Arguing that human evolution has come to a stand-still, this book sets out to explore the evolutionary steps that have defined life on this planet. It describes the stages from cosmic to chemical and biological evolution and to the development of civilization and culture. From this scientific approach, the author concludes that new rules of ethics are required in order to maintain and improve the civilization and culture of humanity. Matare argues for corrective genetic interference and explores the moral implications.

This volume gives an overview on the currently debated ethical issues regarding advance directives from an international perspective. It focuses on a wider understanding of the known and widely accepted concept of patient self-determination for future situations. Although advance directives have been widely discussed since the 1980s, the ethical bases of advance directives still remain a matter of heated debates. The book aims to contribute to these controversial debates by integrating fundamental ethical issues on advance directives with practical matters of their implementation. Cultural, national and professional differences in how advance directives are understood by health care professions and by patients, as well as in laws and regulations, are pinpointed.

This volume brings together a set of critical essays on the thought of Professor Doctor H. Tristram Engelhardt Junior, Co-Founding Editor of the Philosophy and Medicine book series. Amongst the founders of bioethics, Professor Engelhardt, Jr. looms large. Many of his books and articles have appeared in multiple languages, including Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese. The essays in this book focus critically on a wide swath of his work, in the process elucidating, critiquing, and/or commending the rigor and reach of his thought. This volume compasses analyses of many different aspects of Engelhardt's work, including social and political philosophy, biopolitics, the philosophy of medicine, and bioethics. It brings together internationally known scholars to assess key elements of Engelhardt's work.

Behavioral neuroscience encompasses the disciplines of neurobiology and psychology to study mechanisms of behavior. This volume provides a contemporary overview of the current state of how ethics informs behavioral neuroscience research. There is dual emphasis on ethical challenges in experimental animal approaches and in clinical and nonclinical research involving human participants.

Joseph M. Boyle Jr. has been a major contributor to the development of Catholic bioethics over the past thirty five years. Boyle's contribution has had an impact on philosophers, theologians, and medical practitioners, and his work has in many ways come to be synonymous with analytically rigorous philosophical bioethics done in the Catholic intellectual tradition. Four main themes stand out as central to Boyle's contribution: the sanctity of life and bioethics: Boyle has elaborated a view of the ethics of killing at odds with central tenets of the euthanasia mentality, double effect and bioethics: Boyle is among the pre-eminent defenders of a role for double effect in medical decision making and morality, the right to health care: Boyle has moved beyond the rhetoric of social justice to provide a natural law grounding for a political right to health care; and the role of natural law and the natural law tradition in bioethics: Boyle's arguments have been grounded in a particularly fruitful approach to natural law ethics, the so-called New Natural Law theory. The contributors to BIOETHICS WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE: THEMES IN THE WORK OF JOSEPH M. BOYLE discuss, criticize, and in many cases extend the Boyle's advances in these areas with rigor and sophistication. It will be of interest to Catholic and philosophical bioethicists alike.

This book examines key trends in emerging strategic technologies and the implications for geopolitics and human dignity. Al-Rodhan argues that future evolution into transhumans is inevitable. In preparation, the global community is urged to establish strict moral and legal guidelines balancing innovation with the guarantee of dignity for all.

This work sets the stage regarding debates about paternalism and health care for years to come. The anthology is organized around four parts: i) The concept of paternalism and theoretical issues regarding the idea of anti-paternalism, ii) strategies for justifying different forms of paternalism, iii) paternalism in psychiatry and psychotherapy, iv) paternalism and public health, and v) paternalism and reproductive medicine. Medical paternalism was arguably one of the main drivers of debates in medical ethics and has led to a wide acknowledgement of the value of patient autonomy. However, more recent developments in health care, such as the increasing significance of public health measures and the commercialization of medical services, have led to new social circumstances and hence to the need to rethink issues regarding paternalism. This work provides an invaluable source for many scholars and practitioners, since it deals in new and original ways with one of the main and oldest issue in health care ethics.

Shaw addresses the 'ethical turn' in contemporary sociological thinking, by exploring the contribution of sociology and the social sciences to bioethical debates about morality and tissue exchange practices.

Biomedical Ethics for Engineers provides biomedical engineers with a new set of tools and an understanding that the application of ethical measures will seldom reach consensus even among fellow engineers and scientists. The solutions are never completely technical, so the engineer must continue to improve the means of incorporating a wide array of societal perspectives, without sacrificing sound science and good design principles.
Dan Vallero understands that engineering is a profession that profoundly affects the quality of life from the subcellular and nano to the planetary scale. Protecting and enhancing life is the essence of ethics; thus every engineer and design professional needs a foundation in bioethics. In high-profile emerging fields such as nanotechnology, biotechnology and green engineering, public concerns and attitudes become especially crucial factors given the inherent uncertainties and high stakes involved. Ethics thus means more than a commitment to abide by professional norms of conduct. This book discusses the full suite of emerging biomedical and environmental issues that must be addressed by engineers and scientists within a global and societal context. In addition it gives technical professionals tools to recognize and address bioethical questions and illustrates that an understanding of the application of these measures will seldom reach consensus even among fellow engineers and scientists.
- Working tool for biomedical engineers in the new age of technology
- Numerous case studies to illustrate the direct application of ethical techniques and standards
- Ancillary materials available online for easy integration into any academic program

Diplomacy, Funding and Animal Welfare is a practical guide to the best diplomatic and negotiation practices needed to convince governments and international institutions to effectively protect animals, which also introduces new approaches to fundraising. Animal protection advocates are prepared for speaking to diplomats and government officials in any setting, and to combatants in war zones. The book mainly focuses on approaching local and national governments, the United Nations system, the international Red Cross movement and systems related to other international organizations that can help animals, often in surprising ways. The reader will learn the rules of "diplomatic protocol", and much about the rules and procedures of major international bodies. To provide balance and real world relevance, the guide draws on a compilation of the author's extensive activities across a range of development, animal welfare, emergency management and climate issues in government and in the NGO world, as well as interviews with scholars and officials from NGOs, diplomatic missions, the United Nations, the Red Cross, governments and corporations.

The research field of biobanks and tissue research is highly promising. Many projects around the globe are involved in the collection of human tissue and health data for research purposes. These initiatives are driven by the perspective of decisive breakthroughs in the knowledge of the genetic pathways involved in widespread diseases. However, there are considerable ethical and legal challenges to be considered as well. These challenges encompass the use of body material for research purposes, the misuse of genetic and other health data by third parties, trust in science and medicine, concerns regarding privacy, use of genetic data for forensic applications by the state and the police, and regulatory issues. This volume is divided into three parts: the inclusion of the public, the rights of donors and patients, examples and recommendations for the future of tissue research. It presents a comprehensive overview of the most important topics in the field by renowned scholars in medical ethics and biolaw.

This book puts the ethics, policy and politics of stem cells into context in a way that helps readers understand why past and current issues have developed the way they have and what the implications are for their work going forward. It also addresses emerging issues as the field progresses towards clinical and industrial uses. While there is a superabundance of material on the ethics of embryo use and questions of embryonic "personhood," there is little that covers what practicing scientists and managers need to know in order to plan and execute responsible research. Furthermore, researchers funded by the NIH are required to have ethics training as a condition of the grant. As such, this book is an essential resource to all of these pre-professional students whether they plan to move into industry, government or academia.

At the time of the first edition of Principles of Cancer Biotherapy in 1987, this book represented the first comprehensive textbook on biological therapy. In 1991, when the second edition was published, there was still some doubt on the part of many oncologists and cancer researchers as to the therapeutic value of these new approaches. By 2003 and the fourth edition, it was generally agreed that biopharmaceuticals were producing major opportunities for new cancer therapies. Cancer biotherapy has now truly matured into the fourth modality of cancer treatment. This fifth revised edition describes the tremendous progress that has been made in recent years using biologicals in cancer treatment.

This book summarizes an evolving science and a rapidly changing medical practice in biotherapy. In this new millennium, it is now possible to envision a much more diversified system of cancer research and treatment that will afford greater opportunities for a patient s personalized cancer treatment. This was first envisioned in the 1987 initial edition of this textbook and is now a new and popular approach to cancer treatment. Some forms of cancer biotherapy use the strategy of tumor stabilization and control through continued biological therapy, akin to the use of insulin in the treatment of diabetes.

This textbook illustrates new methods of thinking and new strategies for control of cancer. It is always difficult to move from past dogma to future opportunity, but this fifth edition of Principles of Cancer Biotherapy illustrates why it is so important to the patients for researchers and clinicians to explore and quickly apply these new opportunities in cancer biotherapy."