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Written for general readers, teachers, journalists, and policymakers, this volume explores four controversial topics in science and technology, with commentaries from experts in such fields as sociology, religion, law, ethics, and politics: * Antibiotics and Resistance: the science, the policy debates, and perspectives from a microbiologist, a veterinarian, and an M.D. * Genetically Modified Maize and Gene Flow: the science of genetic modification, protecting genetic diversity, agricultural biotech vesus the environment, corporate patents versus farmers' rights * Hormone Replacement Theory and Menopause: overview of the Women's Health Initiative, history of hormone replacement therapy, the medicalization of menopause, hormone replacement therapy and clinical trials * Smallpox: historical and medical overview of smallpox, government policies for public health, the Emergency Health Powers Act, public resistance vs. cooperation.

This book examines the life-science experiments that give rise to the dual-use dilemma. It therefore addresses a topic of tremendous contemporary importance. This is the first book-length treatment of the subject by professional ethicists.

Volume 1: This volume explores four controversial topics in science and technology, with commentaries from experts in such fields as sociology, religion, law, ethics, and politics: Antibiotics and Resistance: the science, the policy debates, and perspectives from a microbiologist, a veterinarian, and an M.D. Genetically Modified Maize and Gene Flow: the science of genetic modification, protecting genetic diversity, agricultural biotech vesus the environment, corporate patents versus farmers' rights. Hormone Replacement Theory and Menopause: overview of the Women's Health Initiative, history of hormone replacement therapy, the medicalization of menopause, hormone replacement therapy and clinical trials. Smallpox: historical and medical overview of smallpox, government policies for public health, the Emergency Health Powers Act, public resistance vs. cooperation. Volume 2: This new volume of the Controversies in Science and Technology series explores five of the most controversial scientific issues facing our world today. This collection of essays addresses stem cell research, information technology, space exploration, global warming, and biology and gender. These issues challenge our beliefs about each other, our planet, societal fairness, the concept of \"knowing,\" and the definition of human life itself. - Publisher. Volume 4: When it comes to any current scientific debate, there are more than two sides to every story. Volume 4 analyzes controversial topics in science and technology-infrastructure, ecosystem management, food security, and plastics and health-from multiple points of view. The editors have compiled thought-provoking essays from a variety of experts from academia and beyond, creating a volume that addresses many of the issues surrounding these scientific debates. Part I of the volume discusses infrastructure, and the real meaning behind the term in today's society. Essays address the central issues that motivate current discussion about infrastructure, including writing on the vulnerability to disasters. Part II, titled \"Food Policy,\" will focus on the challenges of feeding an ever-growing world and the costs of not doing so. Part III features essays on chemicals and environmental health, and works to define \"safety\" as it relates to today's scientific community. The book's final section examines ecosystem management. In the end, Kleinman, Cloud-Hansen, and Handelsman provide a multifaceted volume that will be appropriate for anyone hoping to understand arguments surrounding several of today's most important scientific controversies.

Humans have lived in close proximity to other animals for thousands of years. Recent scientific studies have even shown that the presence of animals has a positive effect on our physical and mental health. People with pets typically have lower blood pressure, show fewer symptoms of depression, and tend to get more exercise.But there is a darker side to the relationship between animals and humans. Animals are carriers of harmful infectious agents and the source of a myriad of human diseases. In recent years, the emergence of high-profile illnesses such as AIDS, SARS, West Nile virus, and bird flu has drawn much public attention, but as E. Fuller Torrey and Robert H. Yolken reveal, the transfer of deadly microbes from animals to humans is neither a new nor an easily avoided problem.Beginning with the domestication of farm animals nearly 10,000 years ago, Beasts of the Earth traces the ways that human-animal contact has evolved over time. Today, shared living quarters, overlapping ecosystems, and experimental surgical practices where organs or tissues are transplanted from non-humans into humans continue to open new avenues for the transmission of infectious agents. Other changes in human behavior like increased air travel, automated food processing, and threats of bioterrorism are increasing the contagion factor by transporting microbes further distances and to larger populations in virtually no time at all.While the authors urge that a better understanding of past diseases may help us lessen the severity of some illnesses, they also warn that, given our increasingly crowded planet, it is not a question of if but when and how often animal-transmitted diseases will pose serious challenges to human health in the future.

So you think modern medicine has the whole virus game figured out? Think again. And it's not even a question of \"if\" we'll be hit by some new and deadly disease-it's \"when.\" The war on germs is being fought on many fronts-from the skirmishes with disease-carrying mosquitoes that cross oceans hidden away in airline wheel wells to the high-profile battle against terrorists wielding deadly bioweapons. Today's bold headlines would have us believe that the biggest threat comes from bioterrorism. But don't underestimate Mother Nature, perhaps the most savage bioterrorist of all. Assisted by the increasing ease with which people-and the germs they carry-move across international borders, she's an effective force to be reckoned with, a key player on this battlefield. As author Madeline Drexler makes clear, we'd do best not to ignore her. Human beings and the pathogens that attack them are crossing paths more and more frequently, particularly as modern life grows increasingly complex. Whatever the infectious agent may be, whether it's pandemic flu, foodborne illness, a debilitating disease carried far and wide by biting insects, or some new microbial horror we have yet to detect, keen surveillance and rapid response are really the only weapons in our arsenal. Secret Agents looks at today's new and emerging infections-those that have increased in attack rate or geographic range, or threaten to do so-and tells the stories of scientists racing to catch up with invisible adversaries superior in both speed and guile. Each chapter focuses on a different threat: foodborne pathogens, antibiotic resistance, animals and insectborne diseases, pandemic influenza, infectious causes of chronic disease, and bioterrorism, including the latest information on the public health threats posed by anthrax and diseases such as smallpox. Based in part on material collected from the Forum on Emerging Infections hosted by the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., Secret Agents is ultimately as engaging as it is disturbing. Drexler's thorough survey of the field of infectious disease, supplemented by extensive interviews with today's top researchers, yields a compelling portrait of a world engaged in a clandestine war. Emerging infections are among the many secret ties that bind the world into an organic whole. We know that infectious disease is an inescapable part of life, but we need to begin thinking globally and acting locally if we are to avoid the menace of a catastrophic outbreak of some new plague. Secret Agents sounds a clear and compelling call to take up arms against the organic predators among us.