The human body is becoming hot property, a resource to be “mined,” “harvested,” patented, and traded commercially for profit as well as scientific and therapeutic advances. Under the new entrepreneurial approach to the body old tensions take on new dimensions—about consent, the fair distribution of tissues and products developed from them, the individual and cultural values represented by the body, and public policy governing the use of organs and tissues.

Dolly is a lamb that was cloned by Dr. Ian Wilmut, a Scottish embryologist. But she is also a Rorschach test. The public response to the production of a lamb by cloning a cultured cell line reflects the futuristic fantasies and Frankenstein fears that have more broadly surrounded research in genetics and especially genetic engineering. Cloning was a term originally applied to a botanical technique of asexual reproduction. But following early experiments in the manipulation of the hereditary and reproductive process (...) during the mid-1960s, the term became associated with human biological engineering. It also became a pervasive theme in horror films and science fiction fantasies. Appearing to promise both amazing new control over nature and terrifying dehumanization, cloning has gripped the popular imagination. (shrink)

David Horn. Social Bodies: Science, Reproduction, and Italian Modernity. (Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History.) xii + 189 pp., bibl., index. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995. $45, ?37.50 (cloth); $14.95, ?11.95 (paper). -/- Susan Merrill Squier. Babies in Bottles: Twentieth-Century Visions of Reproductive Technology. xvi + 270 pp., illus., index. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995. $48 (cloth); $17 (paper).

The 1981 legislation in Arkansas and Louisiana which required "balanced treatment of creation-science and evolution-science" represents the most ambitious effort of the "scientific creationists" to date to gain equal time for the teaching of the book of Genesis as an alternative and viable scientific theory of origins. The trial testing the constitutionality of the Arkansas law culminated in a powerful and unambiguous decision; however, creationists continue to lobby for similar legislation in many other states. Far from an aberration, today's scientific (...) creationists represent a modern manifestation of a deep fundamentalist current in American social history. (shrink)

Controversies concerning the religious implications of science have grown increasingly strained in recent years. Creation scientists have deployed new strategies to eliminate the teaching of evolution in public schools; right-to-life groups have obstructed fetal tissue research; and clerical groups have criticized genomics and genetic testing. Meanwhile, the Templeton Foundation has begun promoting the idea that there is no conflict between science and religion. In this paper, I explore emerging efforts to reconcile religion and science. I focus particularly on the use (...) of religious imagery and metaphor by scientists as they seek to convince the public of the power of genes or to allay concerns about new technologies. I suggest that their use of Godtalk may reflect both its wider prevalence in political rhetoric in the United States and its instrumental utility in light of the religious implications of contemporary biology. (shrink)