Just Genes

Just Genes PDF Author: Carol Isaacson Barash
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313349010
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Advances in genetics research, largely, though not entirely, spawned by the Human Genome Project, have led to a broad array of new technologies that promise to revolutionize life as we have known it. Medicine and agriculture are already starting to utilize new technologies to greatly improve disease prevention and treatment and food production. Yet, these improvements often raise ethical questions that are not easy to untangle. Some have gone as far to as to argue that certain applications, such as embryonic stem cell research, threaten the very fiber of our moral compass. While the application of scientific advances to better humankind has always raised thorny ethical issues, the ethical impact of genetic advances arguably reaches a new height because the applicability of advances is exceptionally broad, deep, and potentially irreversible. To utilize such technologies could mean saving thousands of lives, but where and how do we draw the line? Here, Barash sheds light on the actual ethical concerns surrounding various types of genetic technologies, introducing readers to the competing issues at stake in the arguments about the scientific application of the new technologies available and those on the horizon. She begins by illustrating the history of genetic advances, their societal applications, and the ethical issues that have arisen from those applications. Using case studies and examples throughout, she walks readers through the various considerations involved in a variety of areas related to the application of genetic technologies currently available and possible in the future. Covering topics ranging from stem cell research to genetically modified food, genetic mapping to cloning, this book offers a thoughtful approach to the complex issues at play in the various fields of genetic technologies.

Just Genes

Just Genes PDF Author: Carol Isaacson Barash
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313349010
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book Here

Book Description
Advances in genetics research, largely, though not entirely, spawned by the Human Genome Project, have led to a broad array of new technologies that promise to revolutionize life as we have known it. Medicine and agriculture are already starting to utilize new technologies to greatly improve disease prevention and treatment and food production. Yet, these improvements often raise ethical questions that are not easy to untangle. Some have gone as far to as to argue that certain applications, such as embryonic stem cell research, threaten the very fiber of our moral compass. While the application of scientific advances to better humankind has always raised thorny ethical issues, the ethical impact of genetic advances arguably reaches a new height because the applicability of advances is exceptionally broad, deep, and potentially irreversible. To utilize such technologies could mean saving thousands of lives, but where and how do we draw the line? Here, Barash sheds light on the actual ethical concerns surrounding various types of genetic technologies, introducing readers to the competing issues at stake in the arguments about the scientific application of the new technologies available and those on the horizon. She begins by illustrating the history of genetic advances, their societal applications, and the ethical issues that have arisen from those applications. Using case studies and examples throughout, she walks readers through the various considerations involved in a variety of areas related to the application of genetic technologies currently available and possible in the future. Covering topics ranging from stem cell research to genetically modified food, genetic mapping to cloning, this book offers a thoughtful approach to the complex issues at play in the various fields of genetic technologies.

Genetic Ethics

Genetic Ethics PDF Author: Colin Farrelly
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745695078
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Colin Farrelly contemplates the various ethical and social quandaries raised by the genetic revolution. Recent biomedical advances such as genetic screening, gene therapy and genome editing might be used to promote equality of opportunity, reproductive freedom, healthy aging, and the prevention and treatment of disease. But these technologies also raise a host of ethical questions: Is the idea of “genetically engineering” humans a morally objectionable form of eugenics? Should parents undergoing IVF be permitted to screen embryos for the sex of their offspring? Would it be ethical to alter the rate at which humans age, greatly increasing longevity at a time when the human population is already at potentially unsustainable levels? Farrelly applies an original virtue ethics framework to assess these and other challenges posed by the genetic revolution. Chapters discuss virtue ethics in relation to eugenics, infectious and chronic disease, evolutionary biology, epigenetics, happiness, reproductive freedom and longevity. This fresh approach creates a roadmap for thinking ethically about technological progress that will be of practical use to ethicists and scientists for years to come. Accessible in tone and compellingly argued, this book is an ideal introduction for students of bioethics, applied ethics, biomedical sciences, and related courses in philosophy and life sciences.

The Case against Perfection

The Case against Perfection PDF Author: Michael J Sandel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674043065
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature—to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why. What is wrong with re-engineering our nature? The Case against Perfection explores these and other moral quandaries connected with the quest to perfect ourselves and our children. Michael Sandel argues that the pursuit of perfection is flawed for reasons that go beyond safety and fairness. The drive to enhance human nature through genetic technologies is objectionable because it represents a bid for mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements. Carrying us beyond familiar terms of political discourse, this book contends that the genetic revolution will change the way philosophers discuss ethics and will force spiritual questions back onto the political agenda. In order to grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world. Since these questions verge on theology, modern philosophers and political theorists tend to shrink from them. But our new powers of biotechnology make these questions unavoidable. Addressing them is the task of this book, by one of America’s preeminent moral and political thinkers.

The Progressive Gene

The Progressive Gene PDF Author: Michael C Anderson
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0999688200
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The Progressive Gene fuses the idea of a universal, genetically determined personal and social morality with the expression of that morality in the individual's political philosophy. Although this connection extends to and encompasses society as a whole, the book focuses on the far left of the political spectrum, where the Progressives reside.

Genetic Ethics

Genetic Ethics PDF Author: John Frederic Kilner
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802844286
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This timely volume, written by scholars and practitioners at the forefront of genetic research, will help readers assess from a Christian perspective the ethical questions rased by today's genetic advancements.

The Evolution of Morality

The Evolution of Morality PDF Author: Richard Joyce
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262263254
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Moral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come from, and what purpose does it serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on our ancestors a million years ago, or is it a cultural invention of more recent origin? In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. As a moral philosopher, Joyce is interested in whether any implications follow from this hypothesis. Might the fact that the human brain has been biologically prepared by natural selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense to vindicate this way of thinking—staving off the threat of moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation in genetic terms—if it is, as Joyce writes, "just something that helped our ancestors make more babies"—might such an explanation actually undermine morality's central role in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary "vindication of morality" and the evolutionary "debunking of morality," considering the skeptical view more seriously than have others who have treated the subject. Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area written from the perspective of moral philosophy. Concise and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous but accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for further research into the biological understanding of human morality.

Creating Future People

Creating Future People PDF Author: Jonathan Anomaly
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100076978X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
Creating Future People offers readers a fast-paced primer on how new genetic technologies will enable parents to influence the traits of their children, including their intelligence, moral capacities, physical appearance, and immune system. It deftly explains the science of gene editing and embryo selection, and raises the central moral questions with colorful language and a brisk style. Jonathan Anomaly takes seriously the diversity of preferences parents have, and the limits of public policy in regulating what could soon be a global market for reproductive technology. He argues that once embryo selection for complex traits happens it will change the moral landscape by altering the incentives parents face. All of us will take an interest in the traits everyone else selects, and this will present coordination problems that previous writers on genetic enhancement have failed to consider. Anomaly navigates difficult ethical issues with vivid language and scientifically informed speculation about how genetic engineering will transform humanity. Key features: Offers clear explanations of scientific concepts Explores important moral questions without academic jargon Brings discoveries from different fields together to give us a sense of where humanity is headed

The Science of Good and Evil

The Science of Good and Evil PDF Author: Michael Shermer
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429996757
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
From bestselling author Michael Shermer, an investigation of the evolution of morality that is "a paragon of popularized science and philosophy" The Sun (Baltimore) A century and a half after Darwin first proposed an "evolutionary ethics," science has begun to tackle the roots of morality. Just as evolutionary biologists study why we are hungry (to motivate us to eat) or why sex is enjoyable (to motivate us to procreate), they are now searching for the very nature of humanity. In The Science of Good and Evil, science historian Michael Shermer explores how humans evolved from social primates to moral primates; how and why morality motivates the human animal; and how the foundation of moral principles can be built upon empirical evidence. Along the way he explains the implications of scientific findings for fate and free will, the existence of pure good and pure evil, and the development of early moral sentiments among the first humans. As he closes the divide between science and morality, Shermer draws on stories from the Yanamamö, infamously known as the "fierce people" of the tropical rain forest, to the Stanford studies on jailers' behavior in prisons. The Science of Good and Evil is ultimately a profound look at the moral animal, belief, and the scientific pursuit of truth.

Assessing Genetic Risks

Assessing Genetic Risks PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309047986
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Raising hopes for disease treatment and prevention, but also the specter of discrimination and "designer genes," genetic testing is potentially one of the most socially explosive developments of our time. This book presents a current assessment of this rapidly evolving field, offering principles for actions and research and recommendations on key issues in genetic testing and screening. Advantages of early genetic knowledge are balanced with issues associated with such knowledge: availability of treatment, privacy and discrimination, personal decision-making, public health objectives, cost, and more. Among the important issues covered: Quality control in genetic testing. Appropriate roles for public agencies, private health practitioners, and laboratories. Value-neutral education and counseling for persons considering testing. Use of test results in insurance, employment, and other settings.

Genes and Morality

Genes and Morality PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004433589
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Most public discussion has focused on those effects of genetic research that are considered in some way unwanted or unpleasant. For example, there has been much debate concerning the risks and the ethical appropriateness of genetic screening, gene therapy, and agricultural applications based on genetic techniques. It often claimed that genetic research may cause new problems such as genetic discrimination, stigmatization, environmental risks, or mistreatment of animals. Genes and Morality: New Essays adopts a critical attitude toward genetic research, on both a theoretical and a practical level. It presents some of the most important problems in the ethics of genetic engineering, including the questions of genetic health and disease, genetic testing, responsibility for health, patenting non-human and human life, and problems related to the disclosure of genetic information. The aim of the book is to focus on real ethical and conceptual issues. Consider, for instance, the concept of genetic disease. As one of the contributors, Ingmar Pörn, writes, fear of genetic disease, or anxiety, is not itself a disease any more than fear of becoming unemployed is a disease. Alleviating such emotions is not a medical task to be discharged by drug therapy. The book also examines the philosophical foundations of these issues by discussing the most influential bioethical theories of today, including utilitarianism and principlism.