Reframing rights : bioconstitutionalism in the genetic age / edited by Sheila Jasanoff.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Jasanoff, Sheila, editor.

Series:

Basic bioethics.

Basic bioethics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Genetics.

Bioethics.

Human genetics--Social aspects.

Genetic engineering--Political aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (321 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Legal texts have been with us since the dawn of human history. Beginning in 1953, life too became textual. The discovery of the structure of DNA made it possible to represent the basic matter of life with permutations and combinations of four letters of the alphabet, A, T, C, and G. Since then, the biological and legal conceptions of life have been in constant, mutually constitutive interplay -- the former focusing on life's definition, the latter on life's entitlements. Reframing Rights argues that this period of transformative change in law and the life sciences should be considered "bioconstitutional." Reframing Rights explores the evolving relationship of biology, biotechnology, and law through a series of national and cross-national case studies. Sheila Jasanoff maps out the conceptual territory in a substantive editorial introduction, after which the contributors offer "snapshots" of developments at the frontiers of biotechnology and the law. Chapters examine such topics as national cloning and xenotransplant policies; the politics of stem cell research in Britain, Germany, and Italy; DNA profiling and DNA databases in criminal law; clinical trials in India and the United States; the GM crop controversy in Britain; and precautionary policymaking in the European Union. These cases demonstrate changes of constitutional significance in the relations among human bodies, selves, science, and the state.

Contents:

Cover ; Contents; Series Foreword; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction: Rewriting Life, Reframing Rights; 2 States of Eugenics: Institutions and Practices of Compulsory Sterilization in California; 3 Making the Facts of Life; 4 More than Just a Nucleus: Cloning and the Alignment of Scientific and Political Rationalities; 5 Between Church and State: Stem Cells, Embryos, and Citizens in Italian Politics; 6 Certainty vs. Finality: Constitutional Rights to Postconviction DNA Testing; 7 Judicial Imaginaries of Technology: Constitutional Law and the Forensic DNA Databases

8 Risks and Rights in Xenotransplantation 9 Two Tales of Genomics: Capital, Epistemology, and Global Constitutions of the Biomedical Subject; 10 Human Population Genomics and the Dilemma of Difference; 11 Despotism and Democracy in the United Kingdom: Experiments in Reframing Citizenship; 12 Representing Europe with the Precautionary Principle; 13 Conclusion; Series Page ; Contributors; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

9786613258762

9780262297783

0262297787

9781283258760

1283258765

9780262298667

026229866X

OCLC:

753680776