Beyond Boundaries of Biomedicine


Book Description

Cultural forces shape much of medicine including psychiatry, and medicine shapes much of our culture. Medicine provides us with beneficial treatments of disease, but it also causes harm, increasingly so in the form of overmedication enhanced by the pharmaceutical industry. The book explores boundaries of medicine and psychiatry in a cultural setting by building bridges between unconnected literatures. Boundaries have to be redrawn since effects of the environment, biological, social and political, on health and disease are undervalued. Potential beneficial effects of diet therapies are a recurrent theme throughout the text, with particular emphasis on omega-3 fatty acids. Deficiencies of these acids in common diets may contribute to many chronic diseases and psychiatric disorders. The book uncovers limitations of evidence-based medicine, which fosters a restrictive view of health and disease. Case studies include: the biology of migraine; limitations of biological psychiatry; conventional versus alternative medicine; science, religion and near-death experiences.




Healing across Boundaries


Book Description

This unique volume initiates a dialogue between bio-medicine and alternative therapeutics. Undertaking a multidisciplinary exploration of the science and spirituality of healing and wellness, it offers varied perspectives from doctors, medical researchers, Ayurvedic practitioners, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and cultural critics. It expands the horizons of health sciences in engaging with diverse traditions — bio-medicine, Ayurveda, Siddha, and Jaina bio-ethics. The book will interest scholars and researchers in social and community medicine, biological sciences, sociology and social anthropology, as well as cultural studies.




Solidarity in Biomedicine and Beyond


Book Description

In times of global economic and political crises, the notion of solidarity is gaining new currency. This book argues that a solidarity-based perspective can help us to find new ways to address pressing problems. Exemplified by three case studies from the field of biomedicine: databases for health and disease research, personalised healthcare, and organ donation, it explores how solidarity can make a difference in how we frame problems, and in the policy solutions that we can offer.




Current Themes in Theoretical Biology


Book Description

The present volume originated in 2001 when we, together with our publishing editors at (then) Kluwer Academic Publishers, realized that the th following year the 50 volume of our journal Acta Biotheoretica would see the light. We felt that this milestone should not pass unnoticed and that the appropriate way to mark it would be the publication of a special volume of papers on theoretical biology. While editing this book during 2003 and early 2004, we realized that another milestone was not far off: in 2005 it will be 70 years ago that the journal was founded. We hope that the book lying before you will serve well to mark both events. The papers collected here have been written on invitation by representatives of the theoretical biology community in The Netherlands. They are intended to reflect the entire spectrum of topics on which Acta Biotheoretica publishes, ranging from philosophy of biology on one end to mathematical biology on the other. All chapters (except our own introductory one) have been peer reviewed according to the standards that are maintained with respect to regular submissions to Acta Biotheoretica.




Cross-Cultural Issues in Bioethics


Book Description

Human cloning is a main focus of current bioethical discussion. Involving the self-understanding of the human species, it has become one of the most debated topics in biomedical ethics, not only on the national, but also on the international level. This book brings together articles by bioethicists from several countries who address questions of human cloning within the context of different cultural, religious and regional settings against the background of globalizing biotechnology. It explores on a cross-cultural level the problems and opportunities of global bioethics.




Cultural Studies of James Joyce


Book Description

The first volume to collect essays from the emergent field of cultural studies that specifically address the work of James Joyce, Cultural Studies of James Joyce includes work from both well-established Joyce scholars such as Margot Norris and Cheryl Herr and by such younger writers as Tracey Teets Schwarze and Paul Saint-Amour. Topics range over the whole field of culture, from "Nipper" the Victrola dog to the statuary of Praxitiles, from the Tank Girl comics to studies of Irish schizophrenia, from the history of University College Dublin to the political ferment over choral singing at the turn of the century. The volume should be of interest to Joyceans, to students of literature and culture in the twentieth century, and especially to those interested in the interactions of different cultural levels between the nineteenth century and our own time. An introductory survey by R. Brandon Kershner discusses the rise of cultural studies and places the issue within modern debates in literary theory.




Fractured Biographies


Book Description

A physical chemist (Fritz Haber), a photographer (Josef Breitenbach), a cabaret artist (Georg Kreisler), two writers (Otto Alscher and Albin Stuebs), a pioneering scholar in Irish-German studies (John Hennig) and a Celtic philologist (Julius Pokorny) are the focus of this volume. What they have in common is a biography fractured by the Nazis' rise to power in 1933. Six were forced into exile; the life of the seventh, the Romanian-German writer Otto Alscher, shows that even the biography of a Nazi sympathiser could be dislocated by the years of dictatorship. As the previously unpublished letters which are reproduced here show, Fritz Haber, a Nobel prize winner, spent 'his last lonely months' seeking a dignified way to leave the country to which he had once felt the deepest attachment. Although a prominent member of Germany's academic élite, Julius Pokorny had to retire because of his Jewish ancestry in December 1935 and yet was allowed to continue publishing on ethnic themes until his exile in 1943. Albin Stuebs was forced to seek refuge in Prague and later England when his left-wing political convictions made him a certain target for the Nazis. Because of his marriage into a liberal Jewish family, John Hennig had to renounce all hope of an academic career in Nazi Germany and, after his exile to Ireland, struggled in straitened circumstances to support his family while at the same time developing into an unusually prolific scholar. Proof that exile may stimulate creative energy is provided by Josef Breitenbach, whose remarkable biography appears to show that loss and uprootedness may release otherwise undeveloped creative potential. Similarly, the flight of Georg Kreisler from Vienna in 1938 was the start of 'a remarkable voyage of discovery' which saw him grow into a major, if consistently undervalued figure in the world of post-war German cabaret.




Bodies Beyond Borders


Book Description

The human body in scientific and artistic representations Around 1800 anatomy as a discipline rose to scientific prominence as it undergirded the Paris-centred clinical revolution in medicine. Although classical anatomy gradually lost ground in the following centuries in favor of new disciplines based on microscopic analysis, general anatomy nevertheless remained pivotal in the teaching of medicine. Corpses, anatomical preparations, models, and drawings were used more intensively than ever before. Moreover, anatomy received new forms of public visibility. Through public exhibitions and lectures in museums and fairgrounds, anatomy became part of general education and secured a place in popular imagination. As such, the anatomical body developed into a production site for racial, gender, and class identities. Both within the medical and the public sphere, art and science continued to be closely intertwined in anatomical representations of the body. Bodies Beyond Borders analyzes the notion of circulation in anatomy. Following anatomy through different locations and cultural domains permits a deeper understanding of its history and its changing place in society. The essays in this collection focus on a wide variety of circulating ideas and objects, ranging from models and body parts to illustrations and texts. Together, the essays enable rethinking the relations between metropolis and colony, university and fairground, and scientific and artistic representations of the human body. Contributors: Sokhieng Au (KU Leuven), Margaret Carlyle (University of Minnesota), Tinne Claes (KU Leuven), Veronique Deblon (KU Leuven), Raf de Bont (Maastricht University), Stephen C. Kenny (University of Liverpool), Helen MacDonald (University of Melbourne), Natasha Ruiz-Gómez (University of Essex), Kim Sawchuk (Concordia University), Naomi Slipp (Auburn University-Montgomery), Joris Vandendriessche (KU Leuven), Kaat Wils (KU Leuven)




Intellectual Property Ordering beyond Borders


Book Description

During the past century, intellectual property (IP) law has expanded within and beyond national borders. The field of IP law was once a niche area concerning authors, inventors, and trademark owners. Today, IP law acts as a complex regime of instruments, institutions, and actors that negotiate overlapping, diverging, and occasionally competing public policies on a global scale. As IP continues to expand beyond borders, the instruments and tools utilised for its global protection rely on public international law as the common denominator and unifying frame. Intellectual Property Ordering Beyond Borders provides an evaluation of the most pertinent public international law questions raised by this multidimensional expansion. This comprehensive and far-reaching volume tackles problems such as generalist approaches under the law of treaties; custom and general principles; interfaces between IP and other normative orders, such as trade and investment; and interdisciplinary accounts from the economic, political, and social science perspectives. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.




Beyond Borders


Book Description

How does scientific knowledge circulate? Does scientific communication shape the making of science? Is the making of science a national endeavour or does it have an international or transnational dimension? Are teaching and research equally relevant in this endeavour? How can history of science react to the challenges posed by the changing practices of science in historical context? Beyond Borders is a book generated at the heart of these fundamental questions. In the last decades, the history of science has attained a high degree of disciplinary maturity and sophistication. However, perception of disciplinary crisis is apparent behind calls for the search of new “big pictures” and their implementation in teaching and communicating the history of science to wider audiences. Temporal and narrative fragmentation are seen as major drawbacks hindering the development of the discipline. In addition, national, linguistic and methodological division is increasingly afflicting its practice. Like other areas in the humanities, and in contrast to the sciences, the history of science has nowadays a pronounced local character which clearly constrains its intellectual output. Challenging this state of affairs is a major aim of this book, which argues for a resolute call for intellectual and methodological pluralism and internationalism. Through a broad diversity of subjects, periods, and geographies, covering from studies of sixteenth-century astrological texts to contextual analysis of twentieth-century X-ray spectroscopy, this collection of papers and historiographical essays offers a fresh overview of the field and its major questions. Beyond Borders revisits five major topics in history of science, namely the early modern map of knowledge, pedagogy and science, science popularization, science and the nation and the geography of scientific centres and peripheries. Engaging with a broad diversity of historiographical and methodological approaches in an international perspective, Beyond Borders is a rich and plural manifesto contributing to the reflective appraisal of history of science as a discipline.