Articles and Commentary

The Democratic Party has long gained political capital and much of its identity by holding itself out as a champion of civil liberties. From supporting free speech to protecting individuals' privacy, Democrats have presented themselves as defenders of the basic...

Ten years ago this month, we were definitively told that race is scientifically invalid, supposedly ending centuries of debate over the social versus biological character of racial categories. At the high profile announcement that a draft sequence of the human...

UC Berkeley is proposing to launch an unprecedented, risky experiment on its incoming class. Under the plan, the university will send cotton swabs to thousands of 17- and 18-year-old freshmen and transfer students, and ask them to rub the inside...

President Obama may have given credence to a relatively new but questionable law enforcement practice that the rest of the developed world is starting to shun: taking and retaining DNA samples from individuals arrested for a crime but not convicted...

Since the times of Galileo and as recently as climate change researchers’ battles with the Bush administration, scientists have defended themselves against what they perceive to be undue intrusion into their research by government and other authorities. But rarely have...

Synthetic biology is the rapidly developing field devoted to engineering life from the ground up. It has recently generated headlines about startling applications such as the effort to artificially construct a living bacterium, molecule by molecule. But one of its...

From The MIT Press announcement:

Progress in Bioethics: Science, Policy, and Politics
Edited by Jonathan D. Moreno and Sam Berger
Foreword by Harold Shapiro

Table of Contents and Sample Chapters

Bioethics has become increasingly politicized over the past decade...

Much appreciation is due to Andrew for his courage in soliciting "alternative perspectives" on technology innovation and life in the 21st century. I can't help but observe that his nervousness about doing so is one small sign that something is...