San Antonio College Library

"At the outset of Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity, Leon Kass gives us a status report on where we stand today: "Human nature itself lies on the operating table, ready for alteration, for eugenic and psychic 'enhancement, ' for wholesale redesign. In leading laboratories, academic and industrial, new creators are confidently amassing their powers and quietly honing their skills, while on the street their evangelists are zealously prophesying...

An account of high-tech advances that may or may not revolutionize medical care. Hanson, director of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at the University of Pennsylvania, begins with a profile of his pioneering work as a "doc-in-the-box," where he and his team sit before monitors, alarms and audio-video links to oversee ICU patients in hospitals across a wide area. Using cameras that zoom in on trouble spots, they can instantly contact the appropriate...

"Many of the ethical issues raised by new technologies have not been widely examined, discussed, or indeed settled. For example, robotics technology challenges the notion of personhood. Should a robot, capable of making what humans would call ethical decisions, be held responsible for those decisions and the resultant actions? Should society reward and punish robots in the same way that it does humans? Likewise, issues of safety, environmental concerns,...

"Discusses the history of technological innovation in the biosciences"-- "Scholars and policymakers alike agree that innovation in the biosciences is key to future growth. The field continues to shift and expand, and it is certainly changing the way people live their lives in a variety of ways. But despite the lion's share of federal research dollars being devoted to innovation in the biosciences, the field has yet to live up to its billing as a...

Our lives are about to be changed by new technologies that operate on a scale that is smaller than can be seen by the most powerful optical microscopes. Devices inspired by living cells and measured in nanometers - billionths of a meter - are the basis of this nanotechnology revolution. Michael Gross takes us to this world to explore natural processes and new technologies that will make modern machines look like relics from the Stone Age.

In Drawing Blood, medical historian Keith Wailoo uses the story of blood diseases to explain how physicians in this century wielded medical technology to define disease, carve out medical specialties, and shape political agendas. As Wailoo's account make clear, the seemingly straightforward process of identifying disease is invariably influenced by personal, professional, and social factors - and the result is not only clarity and precision but also...

At a time when medical technologies make it ever easier to enhance our minds and bodies, a debate has arisen about whether such efforts promote a process of "normalization," which makes it ever harder to tolerate the natural anatomical differences among us. The debate becomes especially complicated when it addresses the surgical alteration, or "shaping," of children. This volume explores the ethical and social issues raised by the recent proliferation...