Download or read book Biotechnology and the Human Good written by C. Ben Mitchell and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-23 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some of humankind's greatest tools have been forged in the research laboratory. Who could argue that medical advances like antibiotics, blood transfusions, and pacemakers have not improved the quality of people's lives? But with each new technological breakthrough there comes an array of consequences, at once predicted and unpredictable, beneficial and hazardous. Outcry over recent developments in the reproductive and genetic sciences has revealed deep fissures in society's perception of biotechnical progress. Many are concerned that reckless technological development, driven by consumerist impulses and greedy entrepreneurialism, has the potential to radically shift the human condition—and not for the greater good. Biotechnology and the Human Good builds a case for a stewardship deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian theism to responsibly interpret and assess new technologies in a way that answers this concern. The authors jointly recognize humans not as autonomous beings but as ones accountable to each other, to the world they live in, and to God. They argue that to question and critique how fields like cybernetics, nanotechnology, and genetics might affect our future is not anti-science, anti-industry, or anti-progress, but rather a way to promote human flourishing, common sense, and good stewardship. A synthetic work drawing on the thought of a physician, ethicists, and a theologian, Biotechnology and the Human Good reminds us that although technology is a powerful and often awe-inspiring tool, it is what lies in the heart and soul of who wields this tool that truly makes the difference in our world.
Download or read book Biotechnology and the Future of Society written by The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research and published by Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research. This book was released on 2004-10-20 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breakthroughs in biotechnology are redefining the very concept of life, transforming society and presenting unprecedented opportunities and challenges: Will human genome sequencing help to treat genetic diseases and indefinitely prolong life? Will stem cell therapy and tissue engineering allow routine regeneration and replacement of diseased organs? Can new diagnostic tests revolutionize medicine and healthcare? Will genetic engineering allow parents to design perfect babies? Can nature’s workshop inspire superior biomaterials that transform industries? Will genetically modified super crops feed a hungry world? With biotechnology set to be the driving force of the twenty-first century, mastery of the life sciences will be the key to wealth generation and economic ascendancy. Can the Arab World regain its past supremacy in these fields? Can it benefit from the biotech revolution while avoiding its perils? Such implications were debated by experts at the ECSSR Eighth Annual Conference titled Biotechnology and the Future of Society: Challenges and Opportunities, held from January 11-13, 2003 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This volume of conference presentations explores the broad impact of the biotech revolution, highlighting trends in healthcare and molecular medicine, the genetic revolution in agriculture, the future of materials production, new drug discovery technologies and national security issues, including the threat of bio-terrorism. It also examines the complex ethical, legal and social issues raised by the biotech revolution that need to be resolved by governments and decision makers.
Download or read book Science and Technology in Society written by Daniel Lee Kleiman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thoughtful and engaging text challenges the widely held notion of science as somehow outside of society, and the idea that technology proceeds automatically down a singular and inevitable path. Through specific case studies involving contemporary debates, this book shows that science and technology are fundamentally part of society and are shaped by it. Draws on concepts from political sociology, organizational analysis, and contemporary social theory. Avoids dense theoretical debate. Includes case studies and concluding chapter summaries for students and scholars.
Download or read book Emerging Consequences of Biotechnology written by Krishna R. Dronamraju and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2008 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The principal message of this book is that thermodynamics and statistical mechanics will benefit from replacing the unfortunate, misleading and mysterious term "entropy" with a more familiar, meaningful and appropriate term such as information, missing information or uncertainty. This replacement would facilitate the interpretation of the "driving force" of many processes in terms of informational changes and dispel the mystery that has always enshrouded entropy. It has been 140 years since Clausius coined the term "entropy"; almost 50 years since Shannon developed the mathematical theory of "information"--Subsequently renamed "entropy." In this book, the author advocates replacing "entropy" by "information," a term that has become widely used in many branches of science. The author also takes a new and bold approach to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Information is used not only as a tool for predicting distributions but as the fundamental cornerstone concept of thermodynamics, held until now by the term "entropy." The topics covered include the fundamentals of probability and information theory; the general concept of information as well as the particular concept of information as applied in thermodynamics; the re-derivation of the Sackur-Tetrode equation for the entropy of an ideal gas from purely informational arguments; the fundamental formalism of statistical mechanics; and many examples of simple processes the "driving force" for which is analyzed in terms of information.
Download or read book Biotechnology written by Sean D. Sutton and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2009-07-02 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers the ethics and challenges of biotechnology.
Download or read book Preparing for Future Products of Biotechnology written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1973 and 2016, the ways to manipulate DNA to endow new characteristics in an organism (that is, biotechnology) have advanced, enabling the development of products that were not previously possible. What will the likely future products of biotechnology be over the next 5â€"10 years? What scientific capabilities, tools, and/or expertise may be needed by the regulatory agencies to ensure they make efficient and sound evaluations of the likely future products of biotechnology? Preparing for Future Products of Biotechnology analyzes the future landscape of biotechnology products and seeks to inform forthcoming policy making. This report identifies potential new risks and frameworks for risk assessment and areas in which the risks or lack of risks relating to the products of biotechnology are well understood.
Download or read book Biotechnology and Society written by Hallam Stevens and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Biotechnology and Society, Hallam Stevens offers an up-to-date primer to help us understand the interactions of biotechnology and society and the debates, controversies, fears, and hopes that have shaped how we think about bodies, organisms, and life in the twenty-first century. Stevens addresses such topics as genetically modified foods, cloning, and stem cells; genetic testing and the potential for discrimination; fears of (and, in some cases, hopes for) designer babies; personal genomics; biosecurity; and biotech art. Taken as a whole, the book presents a clear, authoritative picture of the relationship between biotechnology and society today, and how our conceptions (and misconceptions) of it could shape future developments. It is an essential volume for students and scholars working with biotechnology, while still being accessible to the general reader interested in the truth behind breathless media accounts about biotech’s promise and perils.
Download or read book Career Opportunities in Biotechnology and Drug Development written by Toby Freedman and published by CSHL Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential guide for students in the life sciences, established researchers, and career counselors, this resource features discussions of job security, future trends, and potential career paths. Even those already working in the industry will find helpful information on how to take advantage of opportunities within their own companies and elsewhere.
Download or read book Industrialization of Biology written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-06-29 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tremendous progress in biology over the last half century - from Watson and Crick's elucidation of the structure of DNA to today's astonishing, rapid progress in the field of synthetic biology - has positioned us for significant innovation in chemical production. New bio-based chemicals, improved public health through improved drugs and diagnostics, and biofuels that reduce our dependency on oil are all results of research and innovation in the biological sciences. In the past decade, we have witnessed major advances made possible by biotechnology in areas such as rapid, low-cost DNA sequencing, metabolic engineering, and high-throughput screening. The manufacturing of chemicals using biological synthesis and engineering could expand even faster. A proactive strategy - implemented through the development of a technical roadmap similar to those that enabled sustained growth in the semiconductor industry and our explorations of space - is needed if we are to realize the widespread benefits of accelerating the industrialization of biology. Industrialization of Biology presents such a roadmap to achieve key technical milestones for chemical manufacturing through biological routes. This report examines the technical, economic, and societal factors that limit the adoption of bioprocessing in the chemical industry today and which, if surmounted, would markedly accelerate the advanced manufacturing of chemicals via industrial biotechnology. Working at the interface of synthetic chemistry, metabolic engineering, molecular biology, and synthetic biology, Industrialization of Biology identifies key technical goals for next-generation chemical manufacturing, then identifies the gaps in knowledge, tools, techniques, and systems required to meet those goals, and targets and timelines for achieving them. This report also considers the skills necessary to accomplish the roadmap goals, and what training opportunities are required to produce the cadre of skilled scientists and engineers needed.
Download or read book Biotechnology written by Nico Stehr and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "While other books have addressed isolated aspects of recent developments in the biomedical sciences, Biotechnology: Between Commerce and Civil Society is the first book tgo engage with the full range of biotechnology's implications for social science and for society at large." -Professor Volker Meja New scientific knowledge is no longer merely the key to unlocking the secrets of nature and society. It now represents the "becoming" of a new world. Scientific developments affect the ways in which we conduct our affairs, as well as how we comprehend the changes underway as the result of novel technical artefacts and scientific knowledge. The practical fruits of biotechnology are a case in point; they have grasped our imaginations, and generated worldwide debate and concern. Debates on biotechnology shift between images of utopia and dystopia. The social sciences deserve a voice in the debate, and can do so through sober examination of the economic, social, and cultural implications of biotechnology. Some economists even predict that the importance of biotechnology as the technology of the future will far exceed that of the information technologies, in particular the Internet. The contributors to this volume are drawn from a broad spectrum of the social sciences, and include Nico Stehr, Gene Rosa, Steve Fuller, Steve Best and Douglas Kellner, Nikolas Rose, Fred Buttel, Javier Lezaun, Anne Kerr, Susanna Hornig Priest and Toby Ten Eyck, Martin Schulte, Alexander Somek, Steven P. Vallas, Daniel Lee Kleinman, Abby Kinchy and Raul Necochea, Herbert Gottweis, J. Rogers Hollingsworth, Gysli Pblsson, Elizabeth Ettore, Richard Hindmarch and Reiner Grundmann. The impact of science on society is destined to be a fundamental concern in the new century. This volume illustrates the contributions anthropology, law, political science, and sociology can make to the ongoing discussions about the role of biotechnology in modern societies. Nico Stehr is senior research associate, Institut for Technikfolgenabschotzung, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe and Institut for Kostenforschung, GKSS, Germany. He also is a fellow in the Center for Advanced Cultural Studies in Essen, Germany, editor of the Canadian Journal of Sociology, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Among his recent books are Werner Sombart: Economic Life in the Modern Age (with Reiner Grundmann, published by Transaction); The Fragility of Modern Societies: Knowledge and Risk in the Information Age; Knowledge and Economic Conduct: The Social Foundations of the Modern Economy; and Wissenspolitik: Die ?berwachung des Wissens.
Download or read book Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2004-03-02 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years much has happened to justify an examination of biological research in light of national security concerns. The destructive application of biotechnology research includes activities such as spreading common pathogens or transforming them into even more lethal forms. Policymakers and the scientific community at large must put forth a vigorous and immediate response to this challenge. This new book by the National Research Council recommends that the government expand existing regulations and rely on self-governance by scientists rather than adopt intrusive new policies. One key recommendation of the report is that the government should not attempt to regulate scientific publishing but should trust scientists and journals to screen their papers for security risks, a task some journals have already taken up. With biological information and tools widely distributed, regulating only U.S. researchers would have little effect. A new International Forum on Biosecurity should encourage the adoption of similar measures around the world. Seven types of risky studies would require approval by the Institutional Biosafety Committees that already oversee recombinant DNA research at some 400 U.S. institutions. These "experiments of concern" include making an infectious agent more lethal and rendering vaccines powerless.
Download or read book From Breakthrough to Blockbuster written by Donald L. Drakeman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beginning in the 1970s, several scientific breakthroughs promised to transform the creation of new medicines. As investors sought to capitalize on these Nobel Prize-winning discoveries, the biotech industry grew to thousands of small companies around the world. Each sought to emulate what the major pharmaceutical companies had been doing for a century or more, but without the advantages of scale, scope, experience, and massive resources. How could a large collection of small companies, most with fewer than 50 employees, compete in one of the world's most breathtakingly expensive and highly regulated industries? This book shows how biotech companies have met the challenge by creating nearly 40% more of the most important treatments for unmet medical needs. Moreover, they have done so with much lower overall costs. The book focuses on both the companies themselves and the broader biotech ecosystem that supports them. Its portrait of the crucial roles played by academic research, venture capital, contract research organizations, the capital markets, and pharmaceutical companies shows how a supportive environment enabled the entrepreneurial biotech industry to create novel medicines with unprecedented efficiency. In doing so, it also offers insights for any industry seeking to innovate in uncertain and ambiguous conditions. Looking to the future, it concludes that biomedical research will continue to be most effective in the hands of a large group of small companies as long as national healthcare policies allow the rest of the ecosystem to continue to thrive"--
Download or read book Biotechnology and Culture written by Paul Brodwin and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biotechnology and Culture Bodies, Anxieties, Ethics Edited by Paul Brodwin Untangles the broad cultural effects of biotechnologies "A timely and perceptive look from many acute angles, at some of the most anxiety producing issues of the day." --Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley "This impressive collection offers a number of rich examples of why the development of anthropological studies of science, technology, and their disruptive social effects is a leading edge of critical enquiry." --Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University As birth, illness, and death increasingly come under technological control, struggles arise over who should control the body and define its limits and capacities. Biotechnologies turn the traditional "facts of life" into matters of expert judgment and partisan debate. They blur the boundary separating people from machines, male from female, and nature from culture. In these diverse ways, they destroy the "gold standard" of the body, formerly taken for granted. Biotechnologies become a convenient, tangible focus for political contests over the nuclear family, legal and professional authority, and relations between the sexes. Medical interventions also transform intimate personal experience: giving birth, building new families, and surviving serious illness now immerse us in a web of machines, expert authority, and electronic images. We use and imagine the body in radically different ways, and from these emerge new collective discourses of morality and personal identity. Biotechnology and Culture: Bodies, Anxieties, Ethics brings together historians, anthropologists, cultural critics, and feminists to examine the broad cultural effects of technologies such as surrogacy, tissue-culture research, and medical imaging. The moral anxieties raised by biotechnologies and their circulation across class and national boundaries provide other interdisciplinary themes for discourse in these essays. The authors favor complex social dramas of the refusal, celebration, or ambivalent acceptance of new medical procedures. Eschewing polemics or pure theory, contributors show how biotechnology collides with everyday life and reshapes the political and personal meanings of the body. Contributors include Paul Brodwin, Lisa Cartwright, Thomas Csordas, Gillian Goslinga-Roy, Deborah Grayson, Donald Joralemon, Hannah Landecker, Thomas Laqueur, Robert Nelson, Susan Squier, Janelle Taylor, and Alice Wexler. Paul Brodwin, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Adjunct Professor of Bioethics at the Medical College of Wisconsin, is the author of Medicine and Morality in Haiti: The Contest for Healing Power and a coeditor of Pain as Human Experience: Anthropological Perspectives. Theories of Contemporary Culture--Kathleen Woodward, general editor
Download or read book Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology written by Ching T. Hou and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Worldwide energy and food crises are spotlighting the importance of bio-based products - an area many are calling on for solutions to these shortages. Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology encapsulates the cutting-edge advances in the field with contributions from more than 50 international experts comprising sectors of academia, industry, an
Download or read book Biotechnology in Medical Sciences written by Firdos Alam Khan and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2014-05-08 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the field of medical biotechnology grows with new products and discoveries, so does the need for a holistic view of biotechnology in medicine. Biotechnology in Medical Sciences fulfills that need by delivering a detailed overview of medical biotechnology as it relates to human diseases and epidemiology, bacteriology and antibiotics, virology and vaccines, immunology and monoclonal antibodies, recombinant DNA technology and therapeutic proteins, stem cell technology, tissue engineering, molecular diagnostics and forensic science, gene therapy, synthetic biology and nanomedicine, pharmacogenomics, bioethics, biobusiness and intellectual property rights, and career opportunities. Organized to follow the chronology of major medical biotechnology research, breakthroughs, and events, this first-of-its-kind text: Covers all aspects of medical biotechnology, from labs to clinics and basic to advanced applications Describes historical perspectives and modern discoveries in medical biotechnology Explains how various biotechnology products are used to treat and prevent disease Discusses the tools and techniques currently employed in medical biotechnology Includes a bibliography at the end of each chapter to encourage further study Complete with colorful illustrations and examples, Biotechnology in Medical Sciences provides a comprehensive yet accessible treatment of this growing field.
Download or read book Biotechnology and the Food Supply written by National Research Council and published by National Academies. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biotechnology and the food supply was the subject of the Food and Nutrition Board's annual symposium. The papers presented at the symposium, and contained in this volume, address various aspects of this topic, including food production, food safety, and food quality.
Download or read book Medical Biotechnology written by Bernard R. Glick and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-08-06 with total page 758 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The future is now—this groundbreaking textbook illustrates how biotechnology has radically changed the way we think about health care Biotechnology is delivering not only new products to diagnose, prevent, and treat human disease but entirely new approaches to a wide range of difficult biomedical challenges. Because of advances in biotechnology, hundreds of new therapeutic agents, diagnostic tests, and vaccines have been developed and are available in the marketplace. In this jargon-free, easy-to-read textbook, the authors demystify the discipline of medical biotechnology and present a roadmap that provides a fundamental understanding of the wide-ranging approaches pursued by scientists to diagnose, prevent, and treat medical conditions. Medical Biotechnology is written to educate premed and medical students, dental students, pharmacists, optometrists, nurses, nutritionists, genetic counselors, hospital administrators, and individuals who are stakeholders in the understanding and advancement of biotechnology and its impact on the practice of modern medicine. Hardcover, 700 pages, full-color illustrations throughout, glossary, index.
