This paper extends previous arguments against the assumption that the study of variation at the molecular level was instigated with a view to solving an internal conflict between the balance and classical schools of population genetics. It does so by focusing on the intersection of basic research in protein chemistry and the molecular approach to disease with the enactment of global health campaigns during the Cold War period. The paper connects advances in research on protein structure and function (...) as reflected in Christian Anfinsen’s The molecular basis of evolution, with a political reading of Emilé Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling’s identification of molecular disease and evolution. Beyond atomic fallout, these advances constituted a rationale for the promotion of genetic surveys of human populations in the Third World, in connection with international health programs. Light is shed not only on the experimental roots of the molecular challenge but on the broader geopolitical context where the rising role of biomedicine and public health had an impact on evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Many scientific disciplines rely on the construction and use of models: biomedical sciences are no exception. This PhD thesis addresses several aspects of the practice of scientific modeling. First, I discuss the nature of modeling as such, proposing a novel, complementary account of scientific modeling which I term the experimentation-driven modeling account and which drives the construction of mechanistic models in many fields of biological and biomedical research, such as cancer immunology. Second, I scrutinize an objection to the mechanistic account (...) of explanation according to which the account fails to accommodate the common practice of idealizing difference-making factors. I argue that this objection ultimately fails because it is riddled with a number of conceptual inconsistencies. Third, I analyze the roles of similarity judgments in some fields of cancer research which employ a variety of mouse models to learn about the disease mechanisms, arguing that by appreciating the epistemic complexities it is possible to shed new light on more general philosophical debates regarding scientific representation. Fourth, mechanisms can also be studied using more theoretical apparatus in the form of simulations. I investigate an example of an agent-based model used to model the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2... (shrink)

The basic premise of today's scientific medicine is that the ‘book of man’ is written in the language of the biological sciences, ultimately molecular genetics and biochemistry. The patient is a complex biological organism and disease is a deviation from the norm of somatic parameters. At the same time, many major contemporary diseases are reported to have psychosocial and environmental components in their etiology. Hence the challenge: how can a medical model be both scientific and conceptually well-suited to today's (...) disease burden? I argue that certain contemporary "postmodern" sciences support alternative, non-reductionist (self-organizational) premises. So doing, they offer an infrastructure for a medical model at once scientific and responsive to the diseases at hand. Keywords: biomedicine (biological medicine), natural science paradigm, Cartesian dualism, self-organization, postmodern sciences, self-referentiality CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The widespread adoption of radioisotopes as tools in biomedical research and therapy became one of the major consequences of the "physicists' war" for postwar life science. Scientists in the Manhattan Project, as part of their efforts to advocate for civilian uses of atomic energy after the war, proposed using infrastructure from the wartime bomb project to develop a government-run radioisotope distribution program. After the Atomic Energy Bill was passed and before the Atomic Energy Commission was formally established, the Manhattan Project (...) began shipping isotopes from Oak Ridge. Scientists and physicians put these reactor-produced isotopes to many of the same uses that had been pioneered with cyclotron-generated radioisotopes in the 1930s and early 1940s. The majority of early AEC shipments were radioiodine and radiophosphorus, employed to evaluate thyroid function, diagnose medical disorders, and irradiate tumors. Both researchers and politicians lauded radioisotopes publicly for their potential in curing diseases, particularly cancer. However, isotopes proved less successful than anticipated in treating cancer and more successful in medical diagnostics. On the research side, reactor-generated radioisotopes equipped biologists with new tools to trace molecular transformations from metabolic pathways to ecosystems. The U.S. government's production and promotion of isotopes stimulated their consumption by scientists and physicians, such that in the postwar period isotopes became routine elements of laboratory and clinical use. In the early postwar years, radioisotopes signified the government's commitment to harness the atom for peace, particularly through contributions to biology, medicine, and agriculture. (shrink)

We claim that in contemporary studies in molecular biology and biomedicine, the nature of ‘manipulation’ and ‘intervention’ has changed. Traditionally, molecular biology and molecular studies in medicine are considered experimental sciences, whereas experiments take the form of material manipulation and intervention. On the contrary “big science” projects in biology focus on the practice of data mining of biological databases. We argue that the practice of data mining is a form of intervention although it does not require (...) material manipulation. We also suggest that material manipulation, although still present in in the practice of data mining, fulfill a different epistemic role. (shrink)

Not only has the philosophical debate on causation been gaining ground in the last few decades, but it has also increasingly addressed the sciences. The biomedical sciences are among the most prominent fields that have been considered, with a number of works tackling the understanding of the notion of cause, the assessment of genuinely causal relations and the use of causal knowledge in applied contexts. Far from denying the merits of the debate on causation and the major theories it comprises, (...) this paper is meant as a stimulus for theorists of causation in the philosophy of biomedicine, with a focus on clinical matters. Without aiming at putting forward an original theory of causation and starting from the narration of two actual but paradigmatic cases at the joints between biomedical research and clinical practice, we want to point out that some pathological situations addressed by molecular medicine actually prove resistant to some of our major epistemological accounts of causal explanation. Given this scenario, which is very frequent in our hospitals, our analysis aims to provide a stimulus for the debate among theorists of causation in biomedicine interested in real cases in science in practice. We believe that this might in turn encourage some more general rethinking of the complex intertwinement of science, philosophy of science and ethics, as well as of the role of philosophy of science for clinical medicine itself. (shrink)

The widespread adoption of radioisotopes as tools in biomedical research and therapy became one of the major consequences of the "physicists' war" for postwar life science. Scientists in the Manhattan Project, as part of their efforts to advocate for civilian uses of atomic energy after the war, proposed using infrastructure from the wartime bomb project to develop a government-run radioisotope distribution program. After the Atomic Energy Bill was passed and before the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was formally established, the Manhattan (...) Project began shipping isotopes from Oak Ridge. Scientists and physicians put these reactor-produced isotopes to many of the same uses that had been pioneered with cyclotron-generated radioisotopes in the 1930s and early 1940s. The majority of early AEC shipments were radioiodine and radiophosphorus, employed to evaluate thyroid function, diagnose medical disorders, and irradiate tumors. Both researchers and politicians lauded radioisotopes publicly for their potential in curing diseases, particularly cancer. However, isotopes proved less successful than anticipated in treating cancer and more successful in medical diagnostics. On the research side, reactor-generated radioisotopes equipped biologists with new tools to trace molecular transformations from metabolic pathways to ecosystems. The U.S. government's production and promotion of isotopes stimulated their consumption by scientists and physicians (both domestic and abroad), such that in the postwar period isotopes became routine elements of laboratory and clinical use. In the early postwar years, radioisotopes signified the government's commitment to harness the atom for peace, particularly through contributions to biology, medicine, and agriculture. (shrink)

This paper explores the different identities adopted by connective tissue research at the University of Manchester during the second half of the 20th century. By looking at the long-term redefinition of a research programme, it sheds new light on the interactions between different and conflicting levels in the study of biomedicine, such as the local and the global, or the medical and the biological. It also addresses the gap in the literature between the first biomedical complexes after World War (...) II and the emergence of biotechnology. Connective tissue research in Manchester emerged as a field focused on new treatments for rheumatic diseases. During the 1950s and 60s, it absorbed a number of laboratory techniques from biology, namely cell culture and electron microscopy. The transformations in scientific policy during the late 70s and the migration of Manchester researchers to the US led them to adopt recombinant DNA methods, which were borrowed from human genetics. This resulted in the emergence of cell matrix biology, a new field which had one of its reference centres in Manchester. The Manchester story shows the potential of detailed and chronologically wide local studies of patterns of work to understand the mechanisms by which new biomedical tools and institutions interact with long-standing problems and existing affiliations. (shrink)

The rapidly changing field of genetics affects society through advances in health-care and through implications of genetic research. This study addresses the impacts of new genetic discoveries and technologies on different segments of today's society. The book begins with a chapter on genetic complexity, and subsequent chapters discuss moral and ethical questions arising from today's genetics from the perspectives of health care professionals, the media, the general public, special interest groups and commercial interests.

Personalized medicine has recently become the new horizon of healthcare policies worldwide, but it hasalso given rise to misunderstandings and conflicting debates due to the lack of clear definitions and appropriate framing. Personalized medicine is mainly defined as the tailoring of diagnosis and therapies to the genetic profile of each patient, both enhanced by considerable improvements of technologies for acquiring and processing large amounts of data. Is personalized medicine the right term however, considering that it focuses on signaling pathways at (...) the molecular level, where undoubtely persons as such cannot be found?The rival expression «person-centered medicine» has been coined to avoid any ambiguity: on the one hand, molecular biomedicine improved by high-throughtput molecular technologies is more legitimately labelled «individualized» or «precision» medicine, while on the other hand «person-centered medicine» is considered the only authentic personalized medicine insofar as it focuses on the patient as a whole.Far from overcoming the misunderstandings and conflicting views at stake in current debates on futuremedicine however, this divide between personalized and person-centered medicine gives rise to new difficulties and proves to be misleading. Conceptual confusions remain underinvestigated and undermine current attempts to clarify core issues of biomedical research and biomedicine today. This paper intends tohighlight these confusions. (shrink)

Biomedicine is today transforming the human condition, but how such transformation is to be understood is a matter of debate. I seek to contribute to the debate by focusing on recent developments within a relatively novel subfield of gerontology which is engaged in the bio-molecular and bio-demographic characterization of the processes associated with the development of the organism from birth to death. I argue that these developments aid understanding of the conceptual difficulties confronting neo-Darwinian biological thought and poststructuralist (...) social theory as one decentres the organism and the other the subject. (shrink)

Fred Sanger, the inventor of the first protein, RNA and DNA sequencing methods, has traditionally been seen as a technical scientist, engaged in laboratory bench work and not interested at all in intellectual debates in biology. In his autobiography and commentaries by fellow researchers, he is portrayed as having a trajectory exclusively dependent on technological progress. The scarce historical scholarship on Sanger partially challenges these accounts by highlighting the importance of professional contacts, institutional and disciplinary moves in his career, spanning (...) from 1940 to 1983. This paper will complement such literature by focusing, for the first time, on the transition of Sanger's sequencing strategies from degrading to copying the target molecule, which occurred in the late 1960s as he was shifting from protein and RNA to DNA sequencing, shortly after his move from the Department of Biochemistry to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, both based in Cambridge (UK). Through a reinterpretation of Sanger's papers and retrospective accounts and a pioneering investigation of his laboratory notebooks, I will claim that sequencing shifted from the working procedures of organic chemistry to those of the emergent molecular biology. I will also argue that sequencing deserves a history in its own right as a practice and not as a technique subordinated to the development of molecular biology or genomics. My proposed history of sequencing leads to a reappraisal of current STS debates on bioinformatics, biotechnology and biomedicine. (shrink)

The concept of regulation pervades biology, for example in models of genetic regulatory networks and the endocrine system. Regulation has a normative opposite, dysregulation, which figures prominently in biomedical models of disease. The use of normative concepts in biology, however, has been thought to present some challenges for the physicalist view of the world, and various resolutions have been proposed. Up to now the problem of biological normativity has been debated largely in connection with the concept of biological information. In (...) this paper we shift focus to the concept of biological regulation, proposing that it provides a promising new approach to these issues. Models of regulatory systems have several features: they are causal, but they do not deal with the energy exchanges and transformations covered by physics and chemistry; further, and entirely connected, regulatory systems can break down, and this is because they and their causal-regulatory properties are dependent on fragile molecular structures. Biological regulatory systems exhibit normativity, because they are not determined by physical and chemical laws, but their close relationship with physical laws and physicalist ontology is transparent. (shrink)

For some, biology explains all there is to know about the mind. Yet many big questions remain: is the mind shaped by genes or the environment? If mental traits are the result of adaptations built up over thousands of years, as evolutionary psychologists claim, how can such claims be tested? If the mind is a machine, as biologists argue, how does it allow for something as complex as human consciousness? The Biological Mind: A Philosophical Introduction explores these questions and more, (...) using the philosophy of biology to introduce and assess the nature of the mind. Drawing on the four key themes of evolutionary biology; molecular biology and genetics; neuroscience; and biomedicine and psychiatry Justin Garson addresses the following key topics: moral psychology, altruism and levels of selection evolutionary psychology and modularity genes, environment and the nature-nurture debate neuroscience, reductionism and the relation between biology and free will function, selection and mental representation psychiatric classification and the maladapted mind. Extensive use of examples and case studies is made throughout the book, and additional features such as chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology. It will also be an excellent resource for those in related fields such as biology. (shrink)

This article explores contemporary biopolitics in the light of Michel Foucault's oft quoted suggestion that contemporary politics calls `life itself' into question. It suggests that recent developments in the life sciences, biomedicine and biotechnology can usefully be analysed along three dimensions. The first concerns logics of control - for contemporary biopolitics is risk politics. The second concerns the regime of truth in the life sciences - for contemporary biopolitics is molecular politics. The third concerns technologies of the self (...) - for contemporary biopolitics is ethopolitics. The article suggests that, in these events, human beings have become `somatic individuals': personhood is increasingly being defined in terms of corporeality, and new and direct relations are established between our biology and our conduct. At the same time, this somatic and corporeal individuality has become opened up to choice, prudence and responsibility, to experimentation, to contestation and so to a politics of `life itself'. (shrink)

Since the late 1980s, the human genetics and genomics research community has been promising to usher in a “new paradigm for health care”—one that uses molecular profiling to identify human genetic variants implicated in multifactorial health risks. After the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, a wide range of stakeholders became committed to this “paradigm shift,” creating a confluence of investment, advocacy, and enthusiasm that bears all the marks of a “scientific/intellectual social movement” within biomedicine. Proponents (...) of this movement usually offer four ways in which their approach to medical diagnosis and health care improves upon current practices, arguing that it is more “personalized,” “predictive,” “preventive,” and “participatory” than the medical status quo. Initially, it was personalization that seemed to best sum up the movement's appeal. By 2012, however, powerful opinion leaders were abandoning “personalized medicine” in favor of a new label: “precision medicine.” The new label received a decisive seal of approval when, in January 2015, President Obama unveiled plans for a national “precision medicine initiative” to promote the development and use of genomic tools in health care. (shrink)

All epistemic agents physically consist of parts that must somehow comprise an integrated cognitive self. Biological individuals consist of subunits (organs, cells, molecular networks) that are themselves complex and competent in their own context. How do coherent biological Individuals result from the activity of smaller sub-agents? To understand the evolution and function of metazoan bodies and minds, it is essential to conceptually explore the origin of multicellularity and the scaling of the basal cognition of individual cells into a coherent (...) larger organism. In this paper I synthesize ideas in cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and developmental physiology toward a hypothesis about the origin of Individuality: “Scale-Free Cognition”. I propose a fundamental definition of an Individual based on the ability to pursue goals at an appropriate level of scale and organization, and suggest a formalism for defining and comparing the cognitive capacities of highly diverse types of agents. Any Self is demarcated by a computational surface – the spatio-temporal boundary of events that it can measure, model, and try to affect. This surface sets a functional boundary - a cognitive “light cone” which defines the scale and limits of its cognition. I hypothesize that higher-level goal-directed activity and agency, resulting in larger cognitive boundaries, evolve from the primal homeostatic drive of living things to reduce stress – the difference between current conditions and life-optimal conditions. The mechanisms of developmental bioelectricity - the ability of all cells to form electrical networks that process information - suggests a plausible set of gradual evolutionary steps that naturally lead from physiological homeostasis in single cells to memory, prediction, and ultimately complex cognitive agents, via scale-up of the drive of infotaxis. Recent data on the molecular mechanisms of pre-neural bioelectricity suggest a model of how increasingly sophisticated cognitive functions emerge smoothly from cell-cell communication used to guide embryogenesis and regeneration. This set of hypotheses provides a novel perspective on numerous phenomena, such as cancer, and makes several unique, testable predictions for interdisciplinary research that have implications not only for evolutionary developmental biology but also for biomedicine and perhaps artificial intelligence and exobiology. (shrink)

Scientific knowledge production is currently affected by the dissemination of data on an unprecedented scale. Technologies for the automated production and sharing of vast amounts of data have changed the way in which data are handled and interpreted in several scientific domains, most notably molecular biology and biomedicine. In these fields, the activity of data gathering has become increasingly technology-driven, with machines such as next generation genome sequencers and mass spectrometers generating billions of data points within hours, and (...) with little need for human supervision. Given the relative ease and low costs with which datasets can be produced (that is, once a laboratory has been able to afford .. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an emerging explanatory framework about ageing and care. In particular, I focus on how, in contrast to most classical accounts of ageing, biomedicine today construes the ageing process as a modifiable trajectory. This framing turns ageing from a stage of inexorable decline into the focus of preventive strategies, harnessing the functional plasticity of the ageing organism. I illustrate this shift by focusing on studies of the demographic dynamics in human population, observations of ageing as (...) an intraspecifically heterogenous phenotype, and the experimental manipulation of longevity, in both model organisms and humans. I suggest that such an explanatory framework about ageing creates the epistemological conditions for the rise of a peculiar form of prevention that does not aim to address a specific condition. Rather it seeks to stall the age-related accumulation of molecular damage and functional deficits, boosting individual resilience against age-related decline. I call this preventive paradigm “ground-state prevention.” While new, ground-state prevention bears conceptual resemblance to forms of medical wisdom prominent in classic Galenic medicine, as well as in the Renaissance period. (shrink)

The collection and dissemination of data on human and nonhuman organisms has become a central feature of 21st-century biology and has been endorsed by funding agencies in the United States and Europe as crucial to translating biological research into therapeutic and agricultural innovation. Large molecular data sets, often referred to as “big data,” are increasingly incorporated into digital databases, many of which are freely accessible online. These data have come to be seen as resources that play a key role (...) in mediating global market exchange, thus achieving a prominent social and economic status well beyond science itself. At the same time, calls to make all such data publicly and freely available have garnered strength and visibility, most prominently in the form of the Open Data movement. I discuss these developments by considering the conditions under which data journey across the communities and institutions implicated in globalized biology and biomedicine, and what this indicates about how Internet-based communication and the use of online databases affect scientific research and its role within contemporary society. (shrink)

The article is the text of a lecture given at the Faculty of the Humanities, March 2001. It argues that one implication of recent advances in the sciences of life may be that the binary opposition of the normal and the pathological is put into question. Canguilheim’s distinction between vital and social norms is challenged and superseded by a Foucauldian genealogical approach to programs for the government of individuals, and the norms of life that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth (...) centuries are argued to be fundamentally social. Viewing genetics, biopsychiatry, and the commercialisation of drug development and biomedicine, the author argues that the logic of normalisation is loosing its hold, and being replaced by strategies for the continuous molecular management of variation, the modulation of susceptibilities, and the capitalisation of life itself. (shrink)

Knowledge of Life Today presents the thoughts of Jean Gayon, a major philosopher of science in France who is recognized across the Atlantic, especially for his work in philosophy and the history of life sciences. The book is structured around Gayon's personal answers to questions put forward by Victor Petit. This approach combines scientific rigor and risk-taking in answers that go back to the fundamentals of the subject. As well as the relationship between philosophy and the history of science, Gayon (...) discusses the main questions of the history and philosophy of biology that marked his intellectual journey: Darwin, evolutionary biology, genetics and molecular biology, human evolution, and various aspects of the relationship between biology and society in contemporary times (racism, eugenics, biotechnology, biomedicine, etc.). (shrink)

Global interests in bioethics have increased drastically since the end of 20th century. The reason for this should be ascribed to a broad application of molecular-genetic methods introduced in human bio-medicine. This has, in turn, produced an involvement and development of numerous inter-disciplines, which have started to apply bioethics as a part of their own subject of interest. This article presents more than a decade of experience of teaching bioethics in our country, particularly under the auspices of the National (...) Com?mittee for Bioethics of UNESCO-commission of Serbia. Globalni interes za bioetiku drasticno se povecao krajem dvadesetog stoleca, sto treba pripisati sirokoj primeni molekularno-genetickih metoda uvedenih u oblasti humane biomedicine. Ovo je dovelo do prikljucenja i razvitka brojnih interdisciplinarnih oblasti koje su bioetiku prihvatile kao deo svog opsega interesa. U ovom se clanku iznosi iskustvo dugo preko deset godina o primeni edukacije bioetike u nasoj zemlji, posebno u organizaciji i pod okriljem Nacionalnog komiteta za bioetiku UNESCO-ve komisije R. Srbije. (shrink)

The versatile clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas system has emerged as a promising technology for therapy and molecular diagnosis. It is especially suited for overcoming viral infections outbreaks, since their effective control relies on an efficient treatment, but also on a fast diagnosis to prevent disease dissemination. The CRISPR toolbox offers DNA‐ and RNA‐targeting nucleases that constitute dual weapons against viruses. They allow both the manipulation of viral and host genomes for therapeutic purposes and the detection of (...) viral nucleic acids in “Point of Care” sensor devices. Here, we thoroughly review recent advances in the use of the CRISPR/Cas system for the treatment and diagnosis of viral deleterious infections such as HIV or SARS‐CoV‐2, examining their strengths and limitations. We describe the main points to consider when designing CRISPR antiviral strategies and the scientific efforts to develop more sensitive CRISPR‐based viral detectors. Finally, we discuss future prospects to improve both applications. Also see the video abstract here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0z1dLpJWl4. (shrink)

Fred Sanger, the inventor of the first protein, RNA and DNA sequencing methods, has traditionally been seen as a technical scientist, engaged in laboratory bench work and not interested at all in intellectual debates in biology. In his autobiography and commentaries by fellow researchers, he is portrayed as having a trajectory exclusively dependent on technological progress. The scarce historical scholarship on Sanger partially challenges these accounts by highlighting the importance of professional contacts, institutional and disciplinary moves in his career, spanning (...) from 1940 to 1983. This paper will complement such literature by focusing, for the first time, on the transition of Sanger’s sequencing strategies from degrading to copying the target molecule, which occurred in the late 1960s as he was shifting from protein and RNA to DNA sequencing, shortly after his move from the Department of Biochemistry to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, both based in Cambridge (UK). Through a reinterpretation of Sanger’s papers and retrospective accounts and a pioneering investigation of his laboratory notebooks, I will claim that sequencing shifted from the working procedures of organic chemistry to those of the emergent molecular biology. I will also argue that sequencing deserves a history in its own right as a practice and not as a technique subordinated to the development of molecular biology or genomics. My proposed history of sequencing leads to a reappraisal of current STS debates on bioinformatics, biotechnology and biomedicine. (shrink)

Eros and Illness explores the place of desire in illness. We urgently need such an exploration because illness is no longer simply a natural feature of the human condition. Most people fall ill, but illness now falls under the supervision of biomedicine, a science-based, state-regulated system dominated by the new molecular gaze. The use of a person's distinctive genetic data to guide treatment and to forestall disease--called "personalized medicine"-- reflects how the molecular gaze can produce valuable advances (...) in biomedical healthcare. What does this indispensable super-vision, however, tend to overlook? Eros and Illness proposes that biomedicine ignores, in clinical practice and in bench science, the powerful role of desire in illness. Desire, always double-edged, requires attention because it can do both great harm and great good. Patients, caregivers, family members, and physicians, as they recognize the role of desire, gain access to a power that can make the passage through illness much less onerous and far more healing: truly "personalized. (shrink)

Tendencies and efforts have shifted from genome description, DNA mapping, and DNA sequencing to active and profound re-programming, repairing life on genetic and molecular levels in some parts of contemporary life science research. Mirroring and materializing this atmosphere, various life engineering technologies have been used and established in many areas of life sciences in the last decades. A contemporary progressive example of one such technology is DNA editing. Novel developments related to reproductive technologies, particularly embryo editing, prenatal human life (...) engineering, and germline engineering need to be analyzed against the broader social and structural background. The crucial analytical scope for this paper is a specific field: the life-editing technologies used in reproductive medicine and performed experimentally on viable human embryos, particularly CRISPR/cas9 technology. This text argues that germline editing technologies, as a representative part of contemporary biomedicine, are merging ideas of treatment and enhancement to avoid future risks. Using this specific life manipulation of embryos and gametes, the text analyzes these processes within the concept of power over life—biopower and the specific governing rationality that imagines, classifies, and governs contemporary societies. The text specifically focuses on the potential to create, define, and manage future risks and uncertainties related to prenatal life. (shrink)

We compared two digital humanities methods in the analysis of a contested scientific term. “Epigenetics” is as enigmatic as it is popular. Some authors argue that its meaning has diluted over time as this term has come to describe a widening range of entities and mechanisms (Haig, International Journal of Epidemiology 41:13–16, 2012). Others propose both a Waddingtonian “broad sense” and a mechanistic “narrow sense” definition to capture its various scientific uses (Stotz and Griffiths, History and Philosophy of the Life (...) Sciences 38:22, 2016). We evaluated these proposals by first replicating a recent analysis by (Linquist and Fullerton, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 42:137–154, 2021). We analyzed the 1100 most frequently cited abstracts on epigenetics across four disciplines: proximal biology, biomedicine, general biology, and evolution. Each abstract was coded for its heritability commitments (if any) and functional interpretation. A second study applied LDA topic modelling to the same corpus, thus providing a useful methodological comparison. The two methods converged on a discipline-relative ambiguity. Within such disciplines as biomedicine or molecular biology that focus on proximate mechanisms, “epigenetic(s)” refers to a range of molecular structures while specifying nothing in particular about their heritability. This proximal conception was primarily associated with the functions of gene regulation and disease. In contrast, a second relatively uncommon sense of “epigenetic(s)” is restricted to a small proportion of evolutionary abstracts. It refers to many of the same molecular structures, but regards them as trans-generationally inherited and associated with adaptive phenotypic plasticity. This finding underscores the benefit of digital tools in complementing traditional conceptual analysis. Philosophers should be cautious not to conflate the relatively uncommon evolutionary sense of epigenetics with the more widely used proximal conception. (shrink)

Graphical Abstract2015 marks the centennial of the discovery of bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria. Phages have been central to some of biology's most meaningful advances over the past hundred years (shown here); they greatly influence the workings of the biosphere, and are poised to play expanded roles in biomedicine, biotechnology, and ecology.

Despite the transformation in biological practice and theory brought about by discoveries in molecular biology, until recently philosophy of biology continued to focus on evolutionary biology. When the Human Genome Project got underway in the late 1980s and early 1990s, philosophers of biology -- unlike historians and social scientists -- had little to add to the debate. In this landmark collection of essays, Sahotra Sarkar broadens the scope of current discussions of the philosophy of biology, viewing molecular biology (...) as a unifying perspective on life that complements that of evolutionary biology. His focus is on molecular biology, but the overriding question behind these papers is what molecular biology contributes to all traditional areas of biological research.Molecular biology -- described with some foresight in a 1938 Rockefeller Foundation report as a branch of science in which "delicate modern techniques are being used to investigate ever more minute details" -- and its modeling strategies apparently argue in favor of physical reductionism. Sarkar's first three chapters explore reductionism -- defending it, but cautioning that reduction to molecular interactions is not necessarily a reduction to genetics. The next sections of the book discuss function, exploring how functional explanations pose a problem for reductionism; the informational interpretation of biology and how it interacts with reductionism; and the tension between the unifying framework of molecular biology and the received framework of evolutionary theory. The concluding chapter is an essay in the emerging field of developmental evolution, exploring what molecular biology may contribute to the transformation of evolutionary theory as evolutionary theory takes into account morphogenetic development. (shrink)

This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on contemporary biomedicine as a cultural practice.

There is consensus within the chemosciences that olfactory perception is of the molecular structure of chemical compounds, yet within philosophical theories of smell there is little agreement about the nature of smell. The paper critically assesses the current state of debate regarding smells within philosophy in the hopes of setting it upon firm scientific footing. The theories to be covered are: Naïve Realism, Hedonic Theories, Process Theory, Odor Theories, and non-Objectivist Theories. The aforementioned theories will be evaluated based on (...) their explanations of the (a) the olfactory quality of a smell, (b) smells as distal entities, and (c) our experience of smells as intentional objects. The paper concludes with a defense of Molecular Structure Theory that demonstrating its superiority in accounting for each of these three aspects of smell. (shrink)

More and more areas of medicine involve subjects donating tissues to another — blood, organs, bone marrow, sperm, ova and embryos can all be transferred from one person to another. Within the technical frameworks of biomedicine, such fragments are generally treated as detachable things, severed from social identity once they are removed from a particular body. However an abundant anthropological and sociological literature has found that, for donors and patients, human tissues are not impersonal. They retain some of the (...) values of personhood and identity, and their incorporation often has complex effects on embodied identity. This article draws on feminist philosophy of the body to think through the implications of some of these practices. Specifically, it draws on the idea of intercorporeality, wherein the body image is always the effect of embodied social relations. While this approach is highly productive for considering the stakes involved in tissue transfer, it is argued that the concept of body image has been too preoccupied with the register of the visual at the expense of introceptive data and health/illness events. Empirical data around organ transplant and sperm donation are used to demonstrate that the transfer of biological fragments involves a profound kind of intercorporeality, producing identifications and disidentifications between donors and recipients that play out simultaneously at the immunological, psychic and social levels. (shrink)

In this fascinating study, the author analyzes the conceptual roots of molecular biology and the social matrix in which it was developed.

The autophagy initiation complex is brought about via a highly ordered and stepwise assembly process. Two crucial signaling molecules, mTORC1 and AMPK, orchestrate this assembly by phosphorylating/dephosphorylating autophagy‐related proteins. Activation of Atg1 followed by recruitment of both Atg9 vesicles and the PI3K complex I to the PAS (phagophore assembly site) are particularly crucial steps in its formation. Ypt1, a small Rab GTPase in yeast cells, also plays an essential role in the formation of the autophagy initiation complex through multiple regulatory (...) pathways. In this review, our primary focus is to discuss how signaling molecules initiate the assembly of the autophagy initiation complex, and highlight the significant roles of Ypt1 in this process. We end by addressing issues that need future clarification. (shrink)

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.

This paper focuses on the consolidation of Molecular Evolution, a field originating in the 1960s at the interface of molecular biology, biochemistry, evolutionary biology, biophysics and studies on the origin of life and exobiology. The claim is made that Molecular Evolution became a discipline by integrating different sorts of scientific traditions: experimental, theoretical and comparative. The author critically incorporates Timothy Lenoir’s treatment of disciplines , as well as ideas developed by Stephen Toulmin on the same subject. On (...) their account disciplines are spaces where the social and epistemic dimensions of science are deeply and complexly interwoven. However, a more detailed account of discipline formation and the dynamics of an emerging disciplinary field is lacking in their analysis. The present essay suggests focusing on the role of scientific concepts in the double configuration of disciplines: the social/political and the epistemic order. In the case of Molecular Evolution the concepts of molecular clock and informational molecules played a central role, both in differentiating molecular from classical evolutionists, and in promoting communication between the different sorts of traditions integrated in Molecular Evolution. The paper finishes with a reflection on the historicity of disciplines, and the historicity of our concepts of disciplines. (shrink)

Though ubiquitous across the medical social sciences literature, the term “biomedicine” as an analytical concept remains remarkably slippery. It is argued here that this imprecision is due in part to the fact that biomedicine is comprised of three interrelated ontological spheres, each of which frames biomedicine as a distinct subject of investigation. This suggests that, depending upon one’s ontological commitment, the meaning of biomedicine will shift. From an empirical perspective, biomedicine takes on the appearance of (...) a scientific enterprise and is defined as a derivative category of Western science more generally. From an interpretive perspective, biomedicine represents a symbolic-cultural expression whose adherence to the principles of scientific objectivity conceals an ideological agenda. From a conceptual perspective, biomedicine represents an expression of social power that reflects structures of power and privilege within capitalist society. No one perspective exists in isolation and so the image of biomedicine from any one presents an incomplete understanding. It is the mutually-conditioning interrelations between these ontological spheres that account for biomedicine’s ongoing development. Thus, the ontological dissection of biomedicine that follows, with particular emphasis on the period of its formal crystallization in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth century, is intended to deepen our understanding of biomedicine as an analytical concept across the medical social sciences literature. (shrink)

Philosophical discussion of molecular and developmental biology began in the late 1960s with the use of genetics as a test case for models of theory reduction. With this exception, the theory of natural selection remained the main focus of philosophy of biology until the late 1970s. It was controversies in evolutionary theory over punctuated equilibrium and adaptationism that first led philosophers to examine the concept of developmental constraint. Developmental biology also gained in prominence in the 1980s as part of (...) a broader interest in the new sciences of self-organization and complexity. The current literature in the philosophy of molecular and developmental biology has grown out of these earlier discussions under the influence of twenty years of rapid and exciting growth of empirical knowledge. Philosophers have examined the concepts of genetic information and genetic program, competing definitions of the gene itself and competing accounts of the role of the gene as a developmental cause. The debate over the relationship between development and evolution has been enriched by theories and results from the new field of 'evolutionary developmental biology'. Future developments seem likely to include an exchange of ideas with the philosophy of psychology, where debates over the concept of innateness have created an interest in genetics and development. (shrink)

Comprehensive overview of Catholic teaching on practical issues in modern medicine and bioethics. This second edition includes a new chapter on bodily modifications and a series of new figures, as well as bringing the original text up to date in light of the teachings of Pope Francis and recent events such as the covid-19 pandemic.

Perhaps the hottest topic in the philosophy of chemistry is that of the relationship between chemistry and physics. The problem finds one of its main manifestations in the debate about the nature of molecular structure, given by the spatial arrangement of the nuclei in a molecule. The traditional strategy to address the problem is to consider chemical cases that challenge the definition of molecular structure in quantum–mechanical terms. Instead of taking that top-down strategy, in this paper we face (...) the problem of the reduction of molecular structure to quantum mechanics from a bottom-up perspective: our aim is to show how the theoretical peculiarities of quantum mechanics stand against the possibility of molecular structure, defined in terms of the spatial relations of the nuclei conceived as individual localized objects. We will argue that, according to the theory, quantum “particles” are not individuals that can be identified as different from others and that can be reidentified through time; therefore, they do not have the ontological stability necessary to maintain the relations that can lead to a spatially definite system with an identifiable shape. On the other hand, although quantum chemists use the resources supplied by quantum mechanics with successful results, this does no mean reduction: their “approximations” add certain assumptions that are not justified in the context of quantum mechanics or are even inconsistent with the very formal structure of the theory. (shrink)

Advances in molecular biology have generally been taken to support the claim that biology is reducible to chemistry. I argue against that claim by looking in detail at a number of central results from molecular biology and showing that none of them supports reduction because (1) their basic predicates have multiple realizations, (2) their chemical realization is context-sensitive and (3) their explanations often presuppose biological facts rather than eliminate them. I then consider the heuristic and confirmational implications of (...) irreducibility and argue that purely biochemical approaches are likely to be unsound and to be unable to confirm an important range of statements. I conclude by sketching criteria for scientific unity that do not entail reducibility and yet leave an important place for identifying underlying mechanisms. Molecular biology, properly understood, provides an excellent paradigm of non-reductive unity between different explanatory levels. (shrink)

Biomedicine's technological achievements also provide for the expansion of medicine's role as an agent of social regulation.

The paper argues against the central dogma and its interpretation by C. Kenneth Waters and Alex Rosenberg. I argue that certain phenomena in the regulation of gene expression provide a break with the central dogma, according to which sequence specificity for a gene product must be template derived. My thesis of 'molecular epigenesis' with its three classes of phenomena, sequence 'activation', 'selection', and 'creation', is exemplified by processes such as transcriptional activation, alternative cis- and trans-splicing, and RNA editing. It (...) argues that other molecular resources share the causal role of genes; the sequence specificity for the linear sequence of any gene product is distributed between the coding sequence, cis-acting sequences, trans-acting factors, environmental signals, and the contingent history of the cell (thesis of distributed causal specificity). I conclude that the central dogma has unnecessarily restricted genetic research to the sequencing of protein-coding genes, unilinear pathway analyses, and the focus on exclusive specificity. (shrink)

Biologists and historians often present natural history and molecular biology as distinct, perhaps conflicting, fields in biological research. Such accounts, although supported by abundant evidence, overlook important areas of overlap between these areas. Focusing upon examples drawn particularly from systematics and molecular evolution, I argue that naturalists and molecular biologists often share questions, methods, and forms of explanation. Acknowledging these interdisciplinary efforts provides a more balanced account of the development of biology during the post-World War II era.

With attention to the experiences, agency, and rights of tuberculosis patients, this symposium on TB and ethics brings together a range of different voices from the social sciences and humanities. To develop fresh insights and new approaches to TB care and prevention, it is important to incorporate diverse perspectives from outside the strictly biomedical model. In the articles presented in this issue of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, clinical experience is married with historical and cultural context, ethical concerns are brought (...) to bear on global health, and structural analyses shed light upon the lived experience of people living with TB. The relational and reciprocal dimensions of care feature strongly in these discussions, which serve as a poignant reminder that behind each of the yearly deaths from TB is a deeply personal story. No single discipline holds a monopoly on how to care for each of these people, but strong cases are made for support from mental health and social workers in addressing the kaleidoscope of needs in TB prevention. As the World Health Organization moves towards the goal of eliminating TB globally by 2050, attending to the needs of TB patients serves global interests to lower disease burden and to develop better integrated communities worldwide. (shrink)