CRISPR

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luisa Becker-Ritterspach
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Irreversible Change ◽  
The Past

The gene scissors CRISPR/Cas9 has revolutionized genetic engineering in many ways. The technology promises to precisely cut and change gene segments from humans, animals and plants. But how should we deal with a technology that could irreversible change the genetic make-up? A public debate is of utmost importance to answer what science is allowed to do. In the past, however, politicians have not sufficiently succeeded in assigning the necessary importance to the issue and in regulating the procedures accordingly. Why not? This question is pursued in this study. In addition, it is analyzed which institution would be suitable to discuss the topic broadly and to work out proposals for regulation.

100 Years of State Pension: Learning from the Past

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-501
Keyword(s):  
Financial Reporting ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The State ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Tangible Evidence ◽  
State Pension

The President (Mr R. S. Bowie, F.F.A.): Tonight's topic is ‘100 years of state pension: — learning from the past’. I am reminded of the expression: why are the bankers so keen to find new ways of losing money when the old ways seem to have worked perfectly well!The state pension has been going in a recognisable form for only 100 years and only for the last 60 as a universal pension; and only for the last 30 years in the form that we all might recognise today.If the Actuarial Profession can bring value to something from the past, it is to bring a perspective and a context to it so that we can learn from it. In this way, the Profession can create an informed climate within which public debate on matters of public interest can take place. As you will all know, the Financial Reporting Council are pressing the Profession hard to give tangible evidence of its commitment to the public interest, and this book falls into that category, creating an informed background for debate on a matter of huge public interest.

Rethinking Kant as a public intellectual

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-108
Author(s):  
Sofie Møller
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past

In Kant’s Politics in Context, Reidar Maliks offers a compelling account of Kant’s political philosophy as part of a public debate on rights, citizenship, and revolution in the wake of the French Revolution. Maliks argues that Kant’s political thought was developed as a moderate middle ground between radical and conservative political interpretations of his moral philosophy. The book’s central thesis is that the key to understanding Kant’s legal and political thought lies in the public debate among Kant’s followers and that in this debate we find the political challenges which Kant’s political philosophy is designed to solve. Kant’s Politics in Context raises crucial questions about how to understand political thinkers of the past and is proof that our understanding of the past will remain fragmented if we limit our studies to the great men of the established canon.

What We Owe Whistleblowers

2021 ◽  
pp. 140-155
Author(s):  
Jameel Jaffer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
National Security ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Legal Regime ◽  
Public Value ◽  
The Past ◽  
Espionage Act ◽  
Technological Developments

The legal, political, and technological developments of the past twenty years have rendered us more reliant on whistleblowers even as the developments have made whistleblowing more difficult and more hazardous. To promote informed public debate about national security and to preserve the connection between democratic consent and government policy in this sphere, we should extend legal protection, in some circumstances, to government insiders who responsibly disclose official secrets without authorization. Affording leakers a “public value” defense against prosecution would have benefits beyond those usually cited. It would, among other things, reduce the disincentive to socially beneficial leaks, lend legitimacy to Espionage Act prosecutions, more closely align our legal regime with widely shared intuitions about moral responsibility, and restore the courts to an appropriately central role in protecting the public’s access to an essential channel of information.

Conclusion

A Child's Day ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 165-178
Author(s):  
Killian Mullan
Keyword(s):  
Time Use ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Uk

This concluding chapter surveys the key findings and issues raised in the previous chapters. This study of a child's day provides the most extensive picture currently available in the UK, and elsewhere in the world, into how children's time use has changed over the past several decades. It identifies areas of expected change as well as other areas of surprising stability. It reveals how change and stability in children's time use blend together to comprise a child's day, uncovering also the multi-layered contexts of a child's day. Aspects of children's time use, and how this may have changed, will no doubt continue to surface in public debate in connection with their well-being. While welcoming this, it is necessary to always question and seek to understand how supposed changes actually fit within a child's day, the types of days where these changes are concentrated, among whom, and to seek out evidence on how such changes relate to other activities and the social contexts of daily life.

scholarly journals An Update on Molecular Tools for Genetic Engineering of Actinomycetes—The Source of Important Antibiotics and Other Valuable Compounds

Antibiotics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 494
Author(s):  
Lena Mitousis ◽  
Yvonne Thoma ◽  
Ewa M. Musiol-Kroll
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Genome Mining ◽  
Gene Clusters ◽  
Biosynthetic Gene ◽  
Molecular Tools ◽  
Biosynthetic Gene Clusters ◽  
Streptomyces Antibioticus ◽  
The Past ◽  
Bioactive Agents ◽  
Valuable Compounds

The first antibiotic-producing actinomycete (Streptomyces antibioticus) was described by Waksman and Woodruff in 1940. This discovery initiated the “actinomycetes era”, in which several species were identified and demonstrated to be a great source of bioactive compounds. However, the remarkable group of microorganisms and their potential for the production of bioactive agents were only partially exploited. This is caused by the fact that the growth of many actinomycetes cannot be reproduced on artificial media at laboratory conditions. In addition, sequencing, genome mining and bioactivity screening disclosed that numerous biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs), encoded in actinomycetes genomes are not expressed and thus, the respective potential products remain uncharacterized. Therefore, a lot of effort was put into the development of technologies that facilitate the access to actinomycetes genomes and activation of their biosynthetic pathways. In this review, we mainly focus on molecular tools and methods for genetic engineering of actinomycetes that have emerged in the field in the past five years (2015–2020). In addition, we highlight examples of successful application of the recently developed technologies in genetic engineering of actinomycetes for activation and/or improvement of the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites.

scholarly journals Public History in Movement – Present Pasts: the Memory of Slavery in Brazil

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juniele Rabêlo de Almeida ◽  
Larissa Moreira Viana
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public History ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Research Network ◽  
Historical Representation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
The Public Sphere

AbstractPresent Pasts: The Memory of Slavery in Brazil is a sound testament to the Brazilian public history movemen.This problematization of the “present pasts of slavery” finds fertile ground in Brazilian public history because of the urgent need to record and analyze representations of this traumatic past, going beyond professional and academic contexts to the public sphere. Public history offers reinvigorating possibilities for mediation between, and intervention in, the past and its publics.The Present Pasts Research Network provides a thought-provoking example of public history’s ability to be sensitive to broad public debate and how the needs, interests, and representations of communities can be addressed through historical representation, interpretation, and active history-making.

Genetic engineering and social justice: A reflection on Amartya Sen’s capability approach

2020 ◽  
pp. 205789112090768
Author(s):  
Gerry F Arambala
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Health Care Services ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Positive Health ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sub Saharan

Over the past decades, biomedical researchers have made great progress in finding the treatment for many diseases which have been considered in the past as incurable. The struggle for longevity and positive health has been addressed by medical science. People who can afford it are assured by the promise of genetic engineering. But while there has been considerable development in the treatment of diseases, the number of mortalities in poor countries remains high, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia. Around 8 million people die each year worldwide due to poverty-related health issues. Despite the advancement in the treatment of diseases, poor people in most of the developing countries worldwide are dying each year. This article will argue that human poverty and the existence of infectious diseases are inseparable social phenomena that affect the fate of the poor in developing countries. Following Amartya Sen, this article will argue that access to advanced health care services should be affordable to all, and should form part of individual freedoms that the national policies of a country must secure.

Genetic engineering of crop plants: from genome to gene

1997 ◽  
Vol 33 (01) ◽  
pp. 15-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. P. Forster ◽  
M. A. Lee ◽  
U. Lundqvist ◽  
S. Millam ◽  
K. Vamling ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Plant Breeding ◽  
Crop Plants ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
New Varieties ◽  
Transitional Phase ◽  
Selection Of

Genetic engineering of crop plants has been in progress since the dawn of agriculture, about 10 000 years ago. For millennia the genetic make-up of our crop plants has been changed by mankind's selection of naturally occurring variants. As the trade routes were developed, novel plant types were introduced into new environments and provided more variation from which to choose. At the end of the nineteenth century an understanding of the laws of heredity was gained and plant breeding protocols were devised whereby selection became accompanied by deliberate crossing. As the knowledge of the genetic structure of crop plants improved, new ways of manipulation were invented and exploited. Indeed plant breeding became a testing bed for new ideas in genetics. For the plant breeder the techniques which were most widely employed in the past were those which aided breeding, for example techniques which speeded up the production of new varieties, but still used traditional routes of crossing and selection. This was a transitional phase between plant breeding as an art and plant breeding as a science.

Aristotle and Hegel on Nature: Some Similarities

1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (02) ◽  
pp. 13-29
Author(s):  
Liberato Santoro-Brienza
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Considerable Degree ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Nature ◽  
The Past

Michael Petry has observed that “until 1970 there was nobody among the hegelians, not to mention the philosophers of the Naturwissenschaften, willing to recognise Hegel's philosophy of nature as an area of investigation to be taken seriously.” An analogous fate seems to have afflicted Aristotle's Physics, if one agrees with Heidegger that: “The Aristotelian Physics is the arcane (verborgene) fundamental book of Western philosophy and, insofar as arcane, it has never been studied sufficiently.” Fortunately, the past neglect has been amply compensated for by the considerable degree of interest shown, in more recent years, towards both Hegel's and Aristotle's philosophy of nature. With reference to Hegel, that interest may have been nourished initially by the recognition of some isomorphic traits obtaining in Hegel's doctrine and in the methodology of structuralism and gestaltism. Furthermore, part of that interest must have also been triggered by the overall state of bankruptcy and disrepute which have befallen mechanistic, quantitative, empirical or neo-empirical and neo-positivist explanations of reality and of nature. Think of the developments of genetic biology, pathology and genetic engineering. Quantum Mechanics, the highly speculative turn in physics, cosmology, mathematics. By now, the assumptions, methods and findings of these sciences seem to be more kin to Aristotle and Hegel than to Newton and Galileo. Other hypothetical reasons could be offered, to explain the renewed attention paid to Hegel's philosophy of nature. One point, to begin with, emerges from the panorama of recent research on Hegel, namely that - regardless of and despite the recurrent mythical, hyper-animistic, anthropomorphic images, sustained by analogies and metaphorical diction; also despite of the frequent obscurities and downright factual mistakes - the philosopher cannot be sweepingly accused of scientific ignorance, nor of endemically gratuituous a priori, abstract reflection.

Understanding and Overcoming Fear of the Unnatural in Discussion of GMOs

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Lull ◽  
Dietram A. Scheufele
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Genetic Modification ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Naturalistic Fallacy ◽  
Responsible Innovation ◽  
Disgust Sensitivity ◽  
Availability Heuristic ◽  
Affect Heuristic

Fear of the unnatural plays an important role when evaluating a powerful technology such as genetic engineering. Several factors contribute to fear of the unnatural, including heuristics and predispositions. This chapter examines the availability heuristic, affect heuristic, and naturalistic fallacy. It also discusses predispositions such as environmentalism, disgust sensitivity, morality, and anxiety and how fear of the unnatural—if inconsistent with the best available scientific evidence—is a problematic basis for public debate regarding genetic modification. Drawing on several case studies in which fear of the unnatural was overcome and public debate shifted from instinctive fear to substantive deliberation about responsible innovation, the chapter suggests that strategies to overcome fear of the unnatural can foster social accountability.

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