In How to Build a Better Human, prominent bioethicist Gregory E. Pence argues if, we are careful and ethical, we can use genetics, biotechnology, and medicine in safe ethical ways for human enhancement. He looks at the innovations and challenges that have occurred since the birth of bioethics almost 50 years ago and considers the ethical implications of the technological advances that are just around the corner.
Human cloning raises the most profound questions about human nature, our faith in ourselves, and our ability to make decisions that could significantly alter the character of humanity. In this exciting and accessible book, GregoryPence offers a candid and sometimes humorous look at the arguments for and against human cloning. Originating a human being by cloning, Pence boldly argues, should not strike fear in our hearts but should be examined as a reasonable reproductive option for couples. (...)Pence considers how popular culture has influenced the way we think about cloning, and he presents a lucid and non-technical examination of the scientific research and relevant moral issues in the cloning debate. This book is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about the impact of technology on human life and for those with interests in medical ethics, sociology, and public policy. (shrink)
This rich collection, popular among teachers and students alike, provides an in-depth look at major cases that have shaped the field of medical ethics. The book presents each famous (or infamous) case using extensive historical and contextual background, and then proceeds to illuminate it by careful discussion of pertinent philosophical theories and legal and ethical issues.
In this important new book Gregory E. Pence looks at issues on the frontiers of medicine including gene therapy to produce 'brave new babies,' cloning, human eggs and embryos for sale, and experiments on human embryos. Pence argues that the conservatism of the medical establishment, the bioethics community, and the public at large has created shibboleths that impede improvements in our quality of life.
In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, (...) and human history. (shrink)
Flesh of My Flesh is a collection of articles by today's most respected scientists, philosophers, bioethicists, theologians, and law professors about whether we should allow human cloning. It includes historical pieces to provide background for the current debate. Religious, philosophical, and legal points of view are all represented.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every human being on the planet and forced us all to reflect on the bioethical issues it raises. In this timely book, GregoryPence examines a number of relevant issues, including the fair allocation of scarce medical resources, immunity passports, tradeoffs between protecting senior citizens and allowing children to flourish, discrimination against minorities and the disabled, and the myriad issues raised by vaccines.
As the #1 topic in bioethics, cloning has made big news since Dolly's announced birth in 1998. In a new book building on his classic Who's Afraid of Human Cloning?, pioneering bioethicist Gregory E. Pence continues to advocate a reasoned view of cloning. Beginning with his surreal experiences as an expert witness before Congressional and California legislative committees, Pence analyzes the astounding recent progress in animal cloning; the coming surprises about human cloning; the links between animal, stem (...) cell, and human cloning; embryo politics; and other hot topics like artificial wombs and transgenic animals. -/- Pence rebuts the growing chorus of naysayers headed by Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, who attack the biomedical sciences, and explains why cloning will save endangered species and beloved pets, and help future children and people with degenerative diseases. (shrink)
Leading bioethicist GregoryPence demystifies seven foundational theories of addiction to reveal how they must work together to build more comprehensive solutions. Concerned citizens, individuals suffering from addiction, their families, and those who devote their lives to fighting addiction will find this new perspective a hopeful call to arms.
This book gather's thirty-five of Pence's most influential, groundbreaking, and personal essays into one broad-ranging volume. It included essays on cloning, AIDS, dignified death,and test-tube babies.
In the first written volume of David Hume's History of England, Hume describes Oliver Cromwell in this uncomplimentary way:The strokes of his character are as open and strongly marked, as the schemes of his conduct were, during the time, dark and unpenetrable. His extensive capacity enabled him to form the most enlarged projects: His enterprising genius was not dismayed with the boldest and most dangerous. Carried, by his natural temper, to magnanimity, to grandeur, and to an imperious and domineering policy: (...) he knew, when necessary, to employ the most profound dissimulation, the most oblique and refined artiface, the semblance of the greatest moderation and simplicity. A friend to justice, tho’ his public conduct was one continued violation of it; devoted to religion, tho’ he perpetually employed it as the instrument of his ambition; his crimes derived from the prospect of sovereign power, a temptation, which is, in general, irresistible to human nature. (shrink)
In the first written volume of David Hume's History of England, Hume describes Oliver Cromwell in this uncomplimentary way:The strokes of his character are as open and strongly marked, as the schemes of his conduct were, during the time, dark and unpenetrable. His extensive capacity enabled him to form the most enlarged projects: His enterprising genius was not dismayed with the boldest and most dangerous. Carried, by his natural temper, to magnanimity, to grandeur, and to an imperious and domineering policy: (...) he knew, when necessary, to employ the most profound dissimulation, the most oblique and refined artiface, the semblance of the greatest moderation and simplicity. A friend to justice, tho’ his public conduct was one continued violation of it; devoted to religion, tho’ he perpetually employed it as the instrument of his ambition; his crimes derived from the prospect of sovereign power, a temptation, which is, in general, irresistible to human nature. (shrink)
Should there be limits to the human alteration of the natural world? Through a study of debates about the environment, agricultural biotechnology, synthetic biology, and human enhancement, Gregory E. Kaebnick argues that such moral concerns about nature can be legitimate but are also complex, contestable, and politically limited.
Much work in bioethics tries to sidestep bedrock questions about moral values. This is fine if we agree on our values; arguments about human enhancement suggest we do not. One bedrock question underlying these arguments concerns the role of emotion in morality: worries about enhancement are derided as emotional and thus irrational. In fact, both emotion and reason are integral to all moral judgment.
This collection highlights such issues as how the nature of time is relevant to the question of whether God is temporal and how God's other attributes are ...
The emerging phenomenon of genetic paternity testing shows how good science and useful social reform can run off the rails. Genetic paternity testing enables us to sort out, in a transparent and decisive way, the age-old but traditionally never-quite-answerable question of whether a child is genetically related to the husband of the child's mother. Given the impossibility of settling this question for certain, British and American law has long held that a biological relationship must almost always be assumed to exist. (...) According to what is known as the “marital presumption” or “presumption of legitimacy,” a child born to a woman within a marital relationship is assumed to be the biological child of the woman's husband unless he was absent, impotent, or sterile. In other words, if paternity was not a physical impossibility for the husband, there was a nearly irrebuttable presumption that he was the father of the child. The husband was locked into the role of fatherhood. a. (shrink)
Models of recognition memory have traditionally struggled with the puzzle of criterion setting, a problem that is particularly acute in cases in which items for study and test are of widely varying types, with differing degrees of baseline familiarity and experience (e.g., words vs. random dot patterns). We present a dynamic model of the recognition process that addresses the criterion setting problem and produces joint predictions for choice and reaction time. In this model, recognition decisions are based not on the (...) absolute value of familiarity, but on how familiarity changes over time as features are sampled from the test item. Decisions are the outcome of a race between two parallel accumulators: one that accumulates positive changes in familiarity (leading to an ‘‘old’’ decision) and another that accumulates negative changes (leading to a ‘‘new’’ decision). Simulations with this model make realistic predictions for recognition performance and latency regardless of the baseline familiarity of study and test items. (shrink)
: A comparison of casuistry with the strain of particularism developed by John McDowell and David Wiggins suggests that casuistry is susceptible to two very different mistakes. First, as sometimes developed, casuistry tends toward an implausible rigidity and systematization of moral knowledge. Particularism offers a corrective to this error. Second, however, casuistry tends sometimes to present moral knowledge as insufficiently systematized: It often appears to hold that moral deliberation is merely a kind of perception. Such a perceptual model of deliberation (...) cannot offer a convincing account of the possibility of moral progress. This second problem is one to which particularism is itself prone. To redress it, other aspects of casuistry must be exploited: Casuistry contains an account of presumptive generalizations that explains how moral deliberation might be structured by rules while also depending at critical junctures on perception. (shrink)
In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, (...) and human history. (shrink)
Richard Dawkins’s best argument against the existence of God aims to show that the universe fits better with atheism than with theism. The fact that complex life developed gradually over a long period of time is required by an atheistic view but is not required by a theistic view. This fact, then, supports the atheistic view. This argument does raise the probability of atheism. I discuss four analogous arguments that point towards theism. I conclude that Dawkins’s argument lends some support (...) for atheism, but his strategy suggests sufficient arguments to see that the total case points in the opposite direction. (shrink)
