February 3, 2014
(Nanowerk) – A new high-level book for professionals from Atlantis Press providing an overview of nanotechnologies now and their applications in a broad variety of fields, including information and communication technologies, environmental sciences and engineering, societal life, and medicine, with … Read More
January 23, 2014
Governments around the world should not legalise assisted suicide, a Sunderland academic has warned in a new book. Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation, written by Dr Kevin Yuill, Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of … Read More
January 20, 2014
The author of American Medical Ethics Revolution and The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics, Baker spent the past three years writing his latest book. But its roots date back decades, when, in his mid-30s “with a goatee and just … Read More
January 16, 2014
Marianna Palka, who left Scotland to pursue a career in filmmaking in the United States, knew she had a “50-50” chance of getting Huntington’s disease, a rare, but devastating genetic disease that has been described as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and ALS, … Read More
January 16, 2014
In ‘Transcendence’, Johnny Depp plays a brilliant scientist whose mind is allowed to live on and evolve through artificial intelligence, after his body is attacked. (U.S.A. Today)
January 14, 2014
“How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment Systemâ€: That subtitle is the opening shot across the bow in this jeremiad of a book by the psychiatrist Dr. E. Fuller Torrey. It could just as well have read: “How … Read More
December 28, 2013
But thanks to “Polio Wars: Sister Kenny and the Golden Age of American Medicine,†a new biography by Naomi Rogers, a Yale University medical historian, readers can learn why she gained such fame. And while Ms. Kenny’s work was mostly … Read More
December 26, 2013
This is spooky stuff, but it’s real and it’s already happening. Humans are augmenting themselves with computers and technology that will expand their abilities, and it’s going to get more advanced and morally complex as time passes. Imagine transplanting your entire consciousness … Read More
December 26, 2013
Silicon Valley keeps spawning micro-storytelling genres — from six-second Vines to 140-character tweets — that are each more popular than the next. But that hardly means those mini-formats can properly capture the controversies, personalities, ramifications and dangers of the tech … Read More
December 9, 2013
Now, in “Life at the Speed of Light,†Venter goes behind the breakthrough, exploring the biological advances that made his artificial critter possible and offering an insider’s view of one of science’s hottest new fields. (Washington Post)
November 22, 2013
In his new book, Social Networks and Popular Understanding of Science and Health: Sharing Disparities, Dr. Brian Southwell explores the various reasons why there might be such huge differences in the extent to which health and science information gets “spread … Read More
November 11, 2013
Nathaniel Comfort’s whirlwind tour through twentieth-century human genetics is alternately thought-provoking, entertaining and exasperating. His goal is to demonstrate a eugenic impulse that runs continuously from the early 1900s to the present. I think he succeeds in this aim to … Read More
November 8, 2013
Their unusual but touching journey is the subject of Leslie Morgan Steiner’s new book, “The Baby Chase: How Surrogacy Is Transforming the American Family.” “I wanted to look at what happens when we can’t have children and the lengths we … Read More
November 6, 2013
How much is your life worth? If you suffer a heart attack, get bypass surgery, and stay in the hospital for several weeks, you’re looking at about $100,000. If you need insulin to keep from lapsing into a diabetic coma, … Read More
November 5, 2013
It is against this background that one needs to approach the latest edition of David Mabey and colleagues’ Principles of Medicine in Africa. There can be few other medical textbooks that address topics such as refugees, disasters, and nutrition in … Read More
October 16, 2013
Humanity today faces incredible threats and opportunities: climate change, nuclear weapons, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and much, much more. But some people argue that these things are all trumped by one: artificial intelligence (AI). To date, this argument has been confined mainly … Read More
September 27, 2013
The story centers around a genome-analysis company, The Perfect 46, that has developed an algorithm to determine the likelihood of prospective parents having a child with genetic disease. The promise is that future generations could be free of single-gene disorders … Read More
September 26, 2013
A new book goes after good things that were promised decades ago if only the U.S. Supreme Court would legalize abortion. (Chicago Tribune)
September 23, 2013
“After Tiller,†a new documentary by Martha Shane and Lana Wilson, is a partisan document in the culture wars. It could hardly be otherwise, since the film’s subject, abortion, is one where common ground is elusive, if not philosophically untenable. … Read More
September 13, 2013
These questions are discussed in Michael Hauskeller’s new book, a philosophical exploration of the arguments surrounding human enhancement. Hauskeller is sceptical about the value of such aspirations. We know this even before Better Humans? begins, as his acknowledgements thank, among … Read More
September 13, 2013
Synthetic biology aims to design and build organisms to serve human ends, such as producing inexpensive biofuels and developing new kinds of medicines. But this new form of biotechnology also raises ethical questions. The concerns range from environmental and public … Read More
September 12, 2013
How one woman fought the medical establishment and avoided what most Americans fear: prolonged, plugged-in suffering. (The Wall Street Journal)
September 11, 2013
Now, in his first book, “The Distance Between Us,” Chris offers a collection of 156 black and white photos with accompanying text that neither sentimentalizes nor takes pity on Nick. He even photographed the scars from Nick’s deep brain stimulation … Read More
September 4, 2013
In her new book Sweetening the Pill: or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control, Holly Grigg-Spall offers what she calls a “feminist critique†of hormonal contraception. She argues that the so-called liberating force  of the pill has been … Read More
September 2, 2013
Addressing medium- and long-term expectations for human health, this book reviews current scientific and technical developments in nanotechnology for biomedical, agrofood, and environmental applications. This collection of perspectives on the ethical, legal, and societal implications of bionanotechnology provides unique insight … Read More
