Enhancement-line human genetic engineering has recurrently been targeted for bioethical discussion and is usually illustrated by examples alluding to a genetic technology that is far beyond our current possibilities. By discussing an ambitious project related to solid tumor cancers – multidrug resistance – the present paper places the question on a more realistic plane and draws bioethical conclusions to serve as guidelines in the field. The paper also establishes the inadequacy of the prevalent concept of genetic medicine as one of (...) substitution. (shrink)

Science is a dynamic process in which the assimilation of new phenomena, perspectives, and hypotheses into the scientific corpus takes place slowly. The apparent disunity of the sciences is the unavoidable consequence of this gradual integration process. Some thinkers label this dynamical circumstance a ‘crisis’. However, a retrospective view of the practical results of the scientific enterprise and of science itself, grants us a clear view of the unity of the human knowledge seeking enterprise. This book provides many arguments, case (...) studies and examples in favor of the unity of science. These contributions touch upon various scientific perspectives and disciplines such as: Physics, Computer Science, Biology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, and Economics. (shrink)

This volume reflects on the effects of recent discoveries in genetics on a broad range of scientific fields. In addition to neuroscience, evolutionary biology, anthropology and medicine, contributors analyze the effects of genetics on theories of health, law, epistemology and philosophy of biology. Social and moral concerns about the relationship between genetics, society and the individual also figure prominently. Genetic discoveries fuel central contemporary public policy debates concerning, for example, human cloning, equitable access to healthcare or the role of genetics (...) in medicine. Perhaps more fundamentally, advances in genetics are altering our perception of human life and death. An interview with François Jacob by Anne Fagot-Largeault opens the volume. In this interview, Jacob, who shared a Nobel Prize with André Lwoff and Jacques Monod for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis, addresses many of the central methodological epistemological and ethical questions covered in the volume. The dynamic interdisciplinary character of this volume makes it relevant to scholars from many disciplines, from biology, philosophy and the social sciences. (shrink)

During the course of its short history the discipline concerned with the origin of life has given birth to several scientific programmes in the Lakatosian sense, two of the most prominent and widespread being those initiated by Oparin (life began from protein entities) and Muller-Haldane (life began from genetic entities). The present paper sets down the bases for the rational reconstruction of both views by identifying their hard core and some of their successive developments. An assessment is made of the (...) various stages in the evolution of these programmes with respect to the crucial Lakatosian notions of progressivity and regressivity and of how their arguments stand up against one another. This epistemological analysis also establishes the internal reasons why the RNA version of the genotype programme (developed in particular by L. Orgel and S. Spiegelman) has today taken on a progressive character and enjoys recognition by the international scientific community. (shrink)

Health means today something more than the absence of illness or suffering of disability, as the pioneer theories of health had assumed. To be healthy also involves not having genetic mutations that indicate inexorably premature dead or serious disabilities. Genetic tests, whose amount and use grow day by day, have open these predictive possibilities for medicine and, at the same time, influenced for a more strict notion of health. The pathology known as ‘Huntington’s Chorea’ is an example of this kind (...) of situations. Because of the concept of health has deep economical, ethical and legal implications –among others-, it is evident that its modification will influence on society, something that now is occurring in some medical practices. The transformation process of the notions of health and unhealth supports –albeit in part- the sociological thesis that affirm that west society is undergoing a geneticization process. (shrink)

The growing use of genetic tests in medical practice has a strong influence on some widespread notions of health and unhealth. Two consequences of this phenomenon are: (i) important changes in the meaning of these current notions and, therefore, (ii) the arrival of a new taxonomy or rearrangement for the so-called “health-concepts”. This paper attempts to demonstrate that both facts fuel a theoretical change that might be considered a model of scientific Kuhnean change in a fundamental aspect. On the other (...) hand, this theoretical shift process offers the basis for approaching a present-day controversy, i.e. whether Western society is going through a period of geneticization or not, from a new perspective. (shrink)

The first part of this article shows that oureffective means to know and modify directly thehuman genetic make-up generates singular anddifficult situations for the application offundamental medical categories. Specifically,we demonstrate that in dealing with thesesituations, some predominant views on health,such as descriptivism or that which reduces thestate of health to not having presentdisabilities, cannot provide adequate answerseither from the point of view of medicalscience or in terms of our ordinary intuitions.The second part of the article examines thereasons for the failure (...) of these views totackle the mentioned situations, proposessolutions to urgent problems and, finally,offers some foundations for an alternativetheoretical development, id est, for atheory of health able to satisfactorilyintegrate our genetic dimension. (shrink)