Research Catalog

Title

Profession of conscience : the making and meaning of life-sciences liberalism / Robert Hunt Sprinkle.

Author

Sprinkle, Robert Hunt.

Publication

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1994.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

257 pages; 25 cm

Summary

• What happens to a profession that loses the memory of its moral independence? And what happens then to those reliant on its honor, its advocacy, its initiative? In an era of biotechnological adventure, medical audacity, ecological disruption, fiscal strain, and financial temptation, these are urgent questions for all life scientists and for all they serve.
• Profession of Conscience is an exposition, analysis, and application of a political-ethical tradition in, of, and for the life sciences, from molecular genetics to clinical medicine to environmental biology. Sprinkle's goal is avoidance of the fate of physics - the previous "super science"--Whose technological transformations several generations ago so enhanced its political and economic value to governments, societies, and corporations that it lost control of its own conduct. He discovers within the life sciences a long-evolving profession-specific standard for political action and activism, tracing it from conception in Hellenic and Roman imperial times, through birth and baptism in the Scientific Revolution, then through a naively optimistic adolescence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and finally into a self-conscious maturity, solemnized at the Nuremberg Trials but tested ever more subtly since, even down to the present day.
• The protagonist of this book is a set of ideas. The product is "life-sciences liberalism."

Subject

• Life sciences > Social aspects
• Life sciences > Political aspects
• Bioethics
• Biological Science Disciplines > sociology
• Biological Science Disciplines > politics
• Biological Science Disciplines > ethics
• Biomedisch onderzoek
• Ethiek

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [215]-245) and index.

Contents

I.A History of Convictions -- II. From First Problems to the Edge of Modernity -- III. From the Scientific Attitude to the Universalist Sentiment -- IV. From the Scientific Revolution to the Liberal Expectation -- V. From Nonliberal Alternatives to the Liberal Reestablishment -- VI. From Altruism to Activism -- VII. Life-Sciences Liberalism in Abstract and Competition -- VIII. Protecting the State -- IX. Pursuing the National Political Advantage -- X. Aggrandizing the Corporation -- XI. Privatizing the Common Inheritance of Humankind -- XII. Advancing the Public Health -- XIII. Groping in the Light.

ISBN

• 069103365X
• 9780691033655

LCCN

94009662

OCLC

• ocm30069947
• 30069947
• SCSB-2036778

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library