In this provocative anthology, scholars consider the meaning and merits of "nature" in debates about biotechnology and the environment.Drawing on philosophy, religion, and political science, this book asks what the term "nature" means, how it should be considered, and if it is—even in part—a social construct. The contributors question if the quality of being "natural" is intrinsically valuable. They also discuss whether appeals to nature can and should affect public...

Contemporary debates over issues as wide-ranging as the protection of wildernesses and endangered species, the spread of genetically modified organisms, the emergence of synthetic biology, and the advance of human enhancement, all of which seem to spin into deeper and more baffling questions with every change in the news cycle, often circle back to the same fundamental question: should there be limits to the human alteration of the natural world? A growing number of people view the human c...

From the cloning of Dolly the sheep a decade ago to more recent advances in embryonic stem cell research, new genetic technologies have often spurred polemical, ill-informed debates. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the field of reproductive genetics, where difficult bioethical issues are distilled into sound bites and far-fetched claims for easy public consumption. The underlying complexities of reprogenetic research and practice are often drowned out by the noise.In t...

A range of views on the morality of synthetic biology and its place in public policy and political discourse.Synthetic biology, which aims to design and build organisms that serve human needs, has potential applications that range from producing biofuels to programming human behavior. The emergence of this new form of biotechnology, however, raises a variety of ethical questions—first and foremost, whether synthetic biology is intrinsically troubling in moral terms...

Going back at least to the writings of John Stuart Mill and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, people have argued for and against maintaining a state of nature. Is there an inherent virtue in leaving alone a naturally occurring condition, or does the human species thrive when we find ways to improve our circumstances? This volume probes whether “nature” and “the natural” are capable of guiding moral deliberations in policy making.Drawing on philosophy, religion, and political science, this boo...

Over a decade ago, the field of bioethics was established in response to the increased control over the design of living organisms afforded by both medical genetics and biotechnology. Since its introduction, bioethics has become established as an academic discipline with journals and professional societies, is covered regularly in the media, and affects people everyday around the globe. In response to the increasing need for information about medical genetics and biotechnology as well as t...

R. C. Lewontin is a prominent scientist—a geneticist who teaches at Harvard—yet he believes that we have placed science on a pedestal, treating it as an objective body of knowledge that transcends all other ways of knowing and all other endeavours.Lewontin writes in this collection of essays, which began their life as CBC Radio's Massey Lectures Series for 1990: "Scientists do not begin life as scientists, after all, but as social beings immersed in a family, a state, a productive ...

Decisive biotechnological interventions in the lottery of human life--to enhance our bodies and brains and perhaps irreversibly change our genetic makeup--have been widely rejected as unethical and undesirable and have often met with extreme hostility. But in Enhancing Evolution leading bioethicist John Harris dismantles objections to genetic engineering stem-cell research designer babies and cloning to make a forthright sweeping and rigorous ethical case for using biotechnology to im...

Striving to boldly redirect the philosophy of science, this book by renowned philosopher Philip Kitcher examines the heated debate surrounding the role of science in shaping our lives. Kitcher explores the sharp divide between those who believe that the pursuit of scientific knowledge is always valuable and necessary--the purists--and those who believe that it invariably serves the interests of people in positions of power. In a daring turn, he rejects both perspectives, working out a more...

For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively reared animals? Am I doin...

The promise of a regenerative medicine -- the regrowth of lost limbs and organs, new hope for patients with Alzheimer's or multiple sclerosis, the "cellular fountain of youth" -- sounds like science fiction, but it's real and on the cutting edge of medicine. Veteran medical journalist Karen van Kamped looks at this new technology through the stories of the scientists who are creating it and the ethical and legal questions with which they must deal. Many companies and universities in Canada...

“Does an excellent job of using evolutionary biology to discuss the origins of religion, music, art, and . . . morality.”—Publishers Weekly, starred reviewA unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kil...