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When Antibiotics Fail documents the problem noticed in the mid-eighties of the over-reliance of the medical establishment on antibiotics. Biologist and toxicologist Mark Lappe was among the first medical professionals to sound an alarm aabout the effects of ignoring the natural defenses of the immune system and our tendency to substitute the shot-gun use of broad-spectrum antibiotics. This book describes this tendency for busy physicians to fall into inappropriate use of antibiotics. Lappe explains how antibiotics work, why resistance develops, and what we can do to control bacteria and reactivate the body's own natural defenses.
In the wake of the rapid advance of a number of diseases including epidemic drug-resistant bacteria and viruses, tuberculosis, malaria, cancer, and AIDS, Lappe puts forth that the real cause of our current plight is rooted in an historical blindness to the natural forces that have shaped disease organisms and a continued ignorance of the interplay between our massive destruction of the natural order and our own well being. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Reprint. Originally published under the title: Prescribing our future. New York: De Gruyter, c1993.
A rich narrative about the science of "improving" the human race, from the 19th century to genetic engineering today.
The world's food production is undergoing a rapid and revolutionary transformation, but little is known about it and less is being done to question the wisdom of it. Within a very few years, much of what we eat will have been genetically engineered, without proper consideration of the issues of public health, consumer choice and ecological stability. Against the Grain argues that the consequences of this huge experiment could be catastrophic, and at the very least have been underestimated or ignored by the industries exploiting the new technologies. The authors have unearthed government and industry documents which show these new methods to be far from fail-safe or risk free. Comprehensively supported with facts and references, the book provides a full account of the science and technologies involved in producing 'transgenic plants'. It also explains the scale and speed of what is going on, and argues for full public accountability and control of new developments - before it is too late.
Engineering the Farm offers a wide-ranging examination of the social and ethical issues surrounding the production and consumption of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), with leading thinkers and activists taking a broad theoretical approach to the subject. Topics covered include: the historical roots of the anti-biotechnology movement ethical issues involved in introducing genetically altered crops questions of patenting and labeling the "precautionary principle" and its role in the regulation of GMOs effects of genetic modification on the world's food supply ecological concerns and impacts on traditional varieties of domesticated crops potential health effects of GMOs Contributors argue...
Food makes philosophers of us all. Death does the same . . . but death comes only once . . . and choices about food come many times each day. 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. Will genetically modified food feed the poor or destroy the environment? Is it a threat to our health? Is the assumed healthfulness of organic food a myth or a reality? The answers to these and other questions are engagingly pursued in this substantive collection, the first of its kind to address the broad range of philosophical, sociological, political, scientific, and technological issues surrounding the ethics of food.
Our skin covers us in a mantle no thicker than this line of type, separating us from the outside by the thinnest of margins. It is the real and symbolic boundary between ourselves and the external world. It is there, at the body's edge, that some of the most interesting stories about human biology, mythology, medicine, and health are told, and Marc Lappe, author of several highly acclaimed science books, is the right person to tell them. He discusses how the "newly discovered" permeability of the skin, long recognized by other cultures, has lead to the use of drug-bearing patches; how potentially harmful chemicals penetrate the skin; how vulnerable we are to particular environmental insults; and much more. For the first time, he tells the inside story of silicone injections, an ill-fated experiment of the 1960s and 1970s. The Body's Edge is a provocative examination of how we can reinforce what the skin provides and maintain our edge against an increasingly hostile world.
The Human Genome Project is an expensive, ambitious, and controversial attempt to locate and map every one of the approximately 100,000 genes in the human body. If it works, and we are able, for instance, to identify markers for genetic diseases long before they develop, who will have the right to obtain such information? What will be the consequences for health care, health insurance, employability, and research priorities? And, more broadly, how will attitudes toward human differences be affected, morally and socially, by the setting of a genetic “standard”? The compatibility of individual rights and genetic fairness is challenged by the technological possibilities of the future, makin...