Approximately 800,000 human embryos are currently in cryostorage in the United States. The Catholic Church holds that in vitro fertilization and cryopreservation of human embryos are intrinsically evil. IVF continues to increase at a rate of approximately 9 percent per annum. Many Catholic couples have used IVF as a means to conceive a child. There are typically additional embryos that are cryopreserved for later use. Once a couple has reached the number of children they desire, they are faced (...) with a very difficult moral decision regarding the disposition of their remaining frozen embryos. The biological parents must choose one of four options. Three result in death of their frozen embryos. Only one can possibly result in life. The only moral option is embryo adoption, a life-giving choice that is strongly supported by Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14.3 : 441–447. (shrink)

The amygdala is a hub in brain networks that supports social life and fear processing. Compared with other apes, humans have a relatively larger lateral nucleus of the amygdala, which is consistent with both the self-domestication and the cooperative breeding hypotheses of human evolution. Here, we take a comparative approach to the evolutionary origin of the relatively larger lateral amygdala nucleus in humans. We carry out phylogenetic analysis on a sample of 17 mammalian species for which we acquired (...) single amygdala nuclei volumetric data. Our results indicate that there has been convergent evolution toward larger lateral amygdala nuclei in both domesticated and cooperatively breeding mammals. These results suggest that changes in processing fearful stimuli to reduce fear-induced aggression, which are necessary for domesticated and cooperatively breeding species alike, tap into the same neurobiological proximate mechanism. However, humans show changes not only in processing fearful stimuli but also in proactive prosociality. Since cooperative breeding, but not domestication, is also associated with increased proactive prosociality, a prominent role of the former during human evolution is more parsimonious, whereas self-domestication may have been involved as an additional stepping stone. (shrink)

Nietzsche and Shaw are famous and infamous: famous for their innovative and influential forms of writing, but infamous for their apparent support of totalitarianism and Nazism. However, while it has long been shown that Nietzsche’s provocative language about “breeding” and “masters and slaves” was intended to enhance culture through competition, it is still an open question how and when Shaw supported biological eugenics. Via Nietzsche’s “philosophical breeding,” this article presents a new reading of Shaw’s Man and Superman: on (...) the one hand, it contrasts Nietzsche’s philosophical Übermensch with Shaw’s eugenic Superman; and on the other hand, it connects Nietzsche’s agonistic enhancement of culture with Shaw’s philosophical reflections in “Don Juan in Hell.” In contrast to Tanner’s support of eugenic breeding in his Revolutionist’s Handbook, Shaw’s Don Juan remarkably resembles Nietzsche’s notion of “philosophical breeding” toward a more competent, truthful, and autonomous orientation that is needed in increasingly complex global politics. (shrink)

Recent research suggests that some human-like social skills evolved in dogs during domestication as an incidental by-product of selection for “tame” forms of behavior. It is still possible, however, that the social skills of certain dog breeds came under direct selection that led to further increases in social problem solving ability. To test this hypothesis, different breeds of domestic dogs were compared for their ability to use various human communicative behaviors to find hidden food. We found that even (...) primitive breeds with little human contact were able to use communicative cues. Further, “working” dogs were more skilled at using gestural cues than were non-working breeds. This difference in performance existed regardless of whether the working breeds were more or less genetically wolf-like. These results suggest that subsequent to initial domesticating selection giving rise to cue-following skills, additional selection on communicative abilities in certain breeds has produced substantive differences in those breeds’ abilities to follow cues. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay investigates the thesis that inhumanity breeds humanity. Many questions arise when we try to corroborate it: Can we say anything at all about the inhumanity of human beings? Why did large‐scale inhumanity occurring before 1700 not elicit a human rights regime? Was the human rights take‐off from 1760 to 1800 triggered by instances of inhumanity, and why did the take‐off not last? Why did the human rights idea eclipse after 1800 only to reemerge after (...) 1945? Were war and genocide the sole causes of the human rights revival after 1945 or were there also other factors? Was the breakthrough in 1977 of human rights as a mass movement related to any inhumanity? And, finally, is the contemporary enthusiasm for human rights, with 1998 as its stepping stone, sufficient to make atrocities unthinkable for good? I conclude that, at several moments in history, inhumanity did propel humanity, but also that there are many other instances in which inhumanity only gave birth to more inhumanity. If the inhumanity thesis were necessarily true, we would need more human rights catastrophes to inspire more human rights progress. And that would be a self‐defeating paradox. (shrink)

The cultural group selection approach provides a compelling explanation for recent changes in human societies, but has trouble explaining why our ancestors, rather than any other great ape, evolved into a hyper-cooperative niche. The cooperative breeding hypothesis can plug this gap and thus complement CGS, because recent comparative evidence suggests that it promoted proactive prosociality, social transmission, and communication in Pleistocene hominins.

It is frequently claimed that breeding animals that we know will have unavoidable health problems is at least prima facie wrong, because it harms the animals concerned. However, if we take ‘harm’ to mean ‘makes worse off’, this claim appears false. Breeding an animal that will have unavoidable health problems does not make any particular individual animal worse off, since an animal bred without such problems would be a different individual animal. Yet, the intuition that there is something (...) ethically wrong about breeding animals—such as purebred pedigree dogs—in ways that seem negatively to affect welfare remains powerful. In this paper, an animal version of what is sometimes called the non-identity problem is explored, along with a number of possible ways of understanding what might be wrong with such breeding practices, if it is not that they harm the animal itself. These possibilities include harms to others, placeholder arguments, non-comparative ideas of harm, an ‘impersonal’ approach, and concerns about human attitudes and dispositions. (shrink)

During the first half of the twentieth century, the Shepherd Dog came to be strongly identified with Imperial and Nazi Germany, as well as with many other masters in the colonial world. Through its transnational diffusion after World War I, the breed became a pervasive symbol of imperial aggression and racist exploitation. The 1930s Japanese empire subtly Japanized the dogs who became an icon of the Imperial Army. How could a cultural construct so closely associated with Germany come to represent (...) many different colonial regimes? Using Imperial Japan as a case study, this paper argues that this symbolic pliability is a derivative of the high functionality, wide adaptation, and conspicuous nature of the Shepherd Dog as protector, deterrent, and enforcer of social control. As a visible intermediary in hierarchal relationships between different human groups, the Shepherd Dog became a powerful metaphor of Nazi and colonial memories throughout much of the world. (shrink)

Meilaender, Gilbert The concept and meaning of transhumanists, or people who look forward to a world in which aging has been overcome and our physical and intellectual powers have been enhanced is discussed. The excerpts from the book Birth and Breeding: Chapter 3, from 'Neither Beast nor God: the dignity of the human person' are highlighted.

Breeds are classifications of domestic animals that share, to a certain degree, a set of conventional phenotypic traits. We are going to defend that, despite classifying biological entities, animal breeds are social kinds. We will adopt Godman’s view of social kinds, classifications with predictive power based on social learning processes. We will show that, although the folk concept of animal breed refers to a biological kind, there is no way to define it. The expert definitions of breeds are instead based (...) on socially learnt conventions and skills (artificial selection), yielding groupings in which scientific predictions are possible. We will discuss in what sense breeds are social, but not human kinds and in what sense the concept of a breed is necessary to make them real. (shrink)

Dubreuil (Biol Phil 25:53–73, 2010b , this journal) argues that modern-like cognitive abilities for inhibitory control and goal maintenance most likely evolved in Homo heidelbergensis , much before the evolution of oft-cited modern traits, such as symbolism and art. Dubreuil’s argument proceeds in two steps. First, he identifies two behavioral traits that are supposed to be indicative of the presence of a capacity for inhibition and goal maintenance: cooperative feeding and cooperative breeding. Next, he tries to show that these (...) behavioral traits most likely emerged in Homo heidelbergensis . In this paper, I show that neither of these steps are warranted in light of current scientific evidence, and thus, that the evolutionary background of human executive functions, such as inhibition and goal maintenance, remains obscure. Nonetheless, I suggest that cooperative breeding might mark a crucial step in the evolution of our species: its early emergence in Homo erectus might have favored a social intelligence that was required to get modernity really off the ground in Homo sapiens. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s endorsement of a “morality of breeding” or “cultivation” (Züchtung), which he opposes to the morality of “taming” or “domestication” (Zähmen), invites worry that his philosophy may be compatible with ethically dangerous forms of eugenics and, consequently, with the historically associated, abhorrent practices of discrimination, racism, and genocide (TI, “Improvers” 5). While there is a general, if not absolute, consensus that Nietzsche does not actively endorse discrimination or violence, the failure to clearly exclude such egregious views would be sufficient (...) reason to dismiss any positive contribution Nietzsche might make to ethical philosophy. In this paper, I directly oppose Nietzsche’s endorsement of a morality of breeding to all forms of comparative, positive eugenics: the use of genetic selection to introduce positive improvement in individuals or the species, based on negatively or comparatively defined traits. This category includes social Darwinist theories common in the United States and the United Kingdom in the early twentieth century, the racial eugenic theories of National Socialism, and contemporary “liberal,” non-coercive eugenics. I begin by explaining Nietzsche’s contrast between two broad categories of morality: breeding and taming. I argue that the ethical dangers of positive eugenics are grounded in their status as forms of taming, which preserves positively evaluated character traits and types through the active de-selection of negatively evaluated ones. The morality of taming is not a form of selection, but de-selection: the production of counter or anti-traits and types. Consequently, in its attempt to improve humanity, it tends necessarily toward violence as the elimination of de-selected forms of human life. In contrast, Nietzsche’s morality of breeding selects traits and types by protecting them from de-selection—specifically, by attacking moral ideas, values, and practices designed to eliminate them. It tends not towards the destruction but preservation of types; its negativity targets not life but the ideas that disable, disempower, and eradicate forms of life. I argue, further, that the fundamental ethical difference between breeding and taming, and so between Nietzschean morality and eugenics, is found in their attitudes toward the natural world. The violence of eugenics as taming is grounded in its status as anti-natural, while Nietzsche’s morality of breeding resists violence through its foundational affirmation of the conditions and limitations of the natural world: its resolute moral naturalism. Finally, I apply my interpretation of breeding and taming to two cases of comparative, positive eugenics: the historical case of racial eugenics and the so-called “designer baby” case in contemporary liberal eugenics. Nietzsche must condemn both as forms of the anti-natural morality of taming, to which the morality of breeding is diametrically opposed. (shrink)

This paper addresses the 1996 cloning of Dolly the sheep, locating it within a long-standing tradition of animal breeding research in Edinburgh. Far from being an end in itself, the cell-nuclear transfer experiment from which Dolly was born should be seen as a step in an investigative pathway that sought the production of medically relevant transgenic animals. By historicising Dolly, I illustrate how the birth of this sheep captures a dramatic redefinition of the life sciences, when in the 1970s (...) and 1980s the rise of neo-liberal governments and the emergence of the biotechnology market pushed research institutions to show tangible applications of their work. Through this broader interpretative framework, the Dolly story emerges as a case study of the deep transformations of agricultural experimentation during the last third of the twentieth century. The reorganisation of laboratory practice, human resources and institutional settings required by the production of transgenic animals had unanticipated consequences. One of these unanticipated effects was that the boundaries between animal and human health became blurred. As a result of this, new professional spaces emerged and the identity of Dolly the sheep was reconfigured, from an instrument for livestock improvement in the farm to a more universal symbol of the new cloning age. -/- . (shrink)

The Enlightenment commitment to reason naturally gave rise to a belief in the perfectibility of man. Influenced by John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many eighteenth-century writers argued that the proper education and upbringing—breeding—could make any man a member of the cultural elite. Yet even in this egalitarian environment, the concept of breeding remained tied to theories of blood lineage, caste distinction, and biological difference. Turning to the works of Locke, Rousseau, Swift, Defoe, and other giants of the British (...) Enlightenment, Jenny Davidson revives the debates that raged over the husbandry of human nature and highlights their critical impact on the development of eugenics, the emergence of fears about biological determinism, and the history of the language itself. Combining rich historical research with a keen sense of story, she links explanations for the physical resemblance between parents and children to larger arguments about culture and society and shows how the threads of this compelling conversation reveal the character of a century. A remarkable intellectual history, _Breeding_ not only recasts the fundamental concerns of the Enlightenment but also uncovers the seeds of thought that bloomed into contemporary notions of human perfectibility. (shrink)

ArgumentI believe that some pollutions are used as analogies for expressing a general view of the social order.Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger The possibility of crossing humans with other anthropoid species has been discussed in fiction as well as in scientific literature during the twentieth century. Professor Il’ya Ivanov’s attempt to achieve this was crucial for the beginning of organized primate research in the Soviet Union, and remains one of the most interesting and controversial experiments that was ever done on (...) non-human primates. The possibility of removing the boundary that separates humans from other animal species, apes in particular, is loaded with important political meaning and violates cultural and ethical taboos. The history of Ivanov’s scientific experiment thus helps to reveal some of the twentieth-century’s important cultural conventions and hidden assumptions about human nature, species, and social hierarchy. (shrink)

With respect to aggressiveness it is not enough to say that humans are We resemble only those species where males have higher maximum reproductive rates than females. In such species males evolve a set of hormonally mediated competitive traits via sexual selection. Because humans match the predictions of this general evolutionary model, attempts to (re)explain men's aggressiveness in sociological terms are superfluous and misleading.

Pedigree dog breeding has been the subject of public debate due to health problems caused by breeding for extreme looks and the narrow genepool of many breeds. Our research aims to provide insights in order to further the animal-ethical, political and society-wide discussion regarding the future of pedigree dog breeding in the Netherlands. Guided by the question ‘How far are we allowed to interfere in the genetic make-up of dogs, through breeding and genetic modification?’, we carried (...) out a multi-method case-driven research, reviewing literature as well as identifying the perceptions of pedigree dog breeding of a variety of parties in the Netherlands. We examined what moral arguments and concepts different stakeholders, including breeders, veterinarians and animal protection societies, put forward when considering this question. While welfare arguments were often used as a final justification, we also frequently encountered arguments beyond welfare in practice, in particular the arguments that certain adaptations were unnatural, that they instrumentalised animals, or that they amounted to playing God. We argue that the way these arguments are employed points to a virtue ethical approach, foregrounding the virtue of temperance, as a balance between extreme positions was sought by our respondents in a variety of ways. Moreover, we argue against a rejection of unnaturalness arguments based on the naturalistic fallacy, as philosophers tend to do. We point out that unnaturalness arguments are related to people’s worldviews, including views on the proper human–animal relationship. We argue that such arguments, which we label ‘life-ethical’, should be the subject of more public discussion and should not be relegated to the private sphere. (shrink)

Genetic modification of crop plants is frequently described by its proponents as a continuation of the ancient process of domestication. While domestication, crop breeding, and GM all modify the genomes and phenotypes of plants, GM fundamentally differs from domestication in terms of the biological and sociopolitical processes by which change occurs, and the subsequent impacts on agrobiodiversity and seed sovereignty. We review the history of domestication, crop breeding, and GM, and show that crop breeding and GM are (...) continuous with each other in many important ways, but represent a momentous break from domestication because they move plant evolution off of farms and into centralized institutions. The social contexts in which these processes unfold dictate who holds rights to germplasm and agricultural knowledge, shape incentives to effect particular kinds of changes in our crops, and create or constrict biodiversity. Presenting GM as a continuation of domestication puts forward a false equivalency that fundamentally misrepresents how domestication, crop breeding, and GM occur. In doing so, this narrative diminishes public understanding of these important processes and obscures the effects of industrial agriculture on in situ biodiversity and the practice of farming. This misrepresentation is used in public-facing science communication by representatives of the biotechnology industry to silence meaningful debate on GM by convincing the public that it is the continuation of an age-old process that underlies all agricultural societies. (shrink)

Humans are obligate cooperative breeders, relying heavily on support from kin to raise children. To date, most studies of cooperative breeding have focused on help that supplements rather than replaces parental care. Here we propose that fosterage can act as a form of dispersed cooperative breeding, one that enhances women’s fitness by allowing them to disinvest in some children and reallocate effort to others. We test this hypothesis through a series of predictions about the costs and benefits of (...) fosterage for mothers, foster parents, and foster children using data from the Himba, a group of Namibian agro-pastoralists. We show that fostering out children enhances mothers’ fitness, and we provide evidence for a causal link from fosterage to enhanced fitness by showing that fosterage of early-born children is associated with greater maternal reproductive success. Foster parents minimize the costs of fosterage by skewing their care toward their postreproductive years, and by mainly fostering close kin. However, the system is associated with some detrimental effects on foster children, who are more likely to be stunted and underweight than their non-fostered counterparts. (shrink)

In this paper, I directly oppose Nietzsche ’s endorsement of a morality of breeding to all forms of comparative, positive eugenics: the use of genetic selection to introduce positive improvement in individuals or the species, based on negatively or comparatively defined traits. I begin by explaining Nietzsche ’s contrast between two broad categories of morality: breeding and taming. I argue that the ethical dangers of positive eugenics are grounded in their status as forms of taming, which preserves positively (...) evaluated character traits and types through the active de-selection of negatively evaluated ones. The morality of taming is not a form of selection, but de-selection: the production of counter or anti-traits and types. Consequently, in its attempt to improve humanity, it tends necessarily toward violence as the elimination of de-selected forms of human life. In contrast, Nietzsche ’s morality of breeding selects traits and types by protecting them from de-selection—specifically, by attacking moral ideas, values, and practices designed to eliminate them. It tends not towards the destruction but preservation of types; its negativity targets not life but the ideas that disable, disempower, and eradicate forms of life. I argue, further, that the fundamental ethical difference between breeding and taming, and so between Nietzschean morality and eugenics, is found in their attitudes toward the natural world. The violence of eugenics as taming is grounded in its status as anti-natural, while Nietzsche ’s morality of breeding resists violence through its foundational affirmation of the conditions and limitations of the natural world: its resolute moral naturalism. Finally, I apply my interpretation of breeding and taming to two cases of comparative, positive eugenics: the historical case of racial eugenics and the so-called “designer baby” case in contemporary liberal eugenics. Nietzsche must condemn both as forms of the anti-natural morality of taming, to which the morality of breeding is diametrically opposed. (shrink)

How should we regard increasingly autonomous and human-like robots? Kate Darling’s monograph New Breed explores this terrain, with an eye to the conceptual, moral, and legal issues informing the debate. Darling’s thesis is simple: by drawing from humankind’s history with animals, we will learn how to incorporate future robots into our social world. Combining personal narrative, legal history, and case-studies, Darling tells a readable story that may just change what we think about when we think about robots. Although not (...) always persuasive, Darling’s arguments are stimulating and worth debating, writes Beba Cibralic. (shrink)

This article presents a holistic framework for understanding the scienceof plant breeding, as an alternative to the common objectivist andconstructivist approaches in studies of science. It applies thisapproach to understanding disagreements about how to deal with yieldstability. Two contrasting definitions of yield stability are described,and concomitant differences in the understanding and roles ofsustainability and of selection, test, and target environments areexplored. Critical questions about plant breeding theory and practiceare posed, and answers from the viewpoint of the two contrastingdefinitions (...) of yield stability are analyzed, based on key publicationsin the field. Differences in answers to these questions appear to resultboth from the contingencies of plant breeders' experiences withparticular crop varieties and growing environments, and from differencesin social and institutional settings – plant breeding science isboth objective truth and social construction. The goal of using aholistic framework is to encourage discussion among plant breeders,farmers, social scientists, and others, of the bases for disagreementswithin plant breeding, in order to facilitate plant breeding'scontribution to a more environmentally, economically, and sociallysustainable agriculture. (shrink)

There is a strong need to connect agricultural research to social movements and community-based food system reform efforts. Participatory research methods are a powerful tool, increasingly used to give voice to communities overlooked by academia or marginalized in the broader food system. Plant breeding, as a field of research and practice, is uniquely well-suited to participatory project designs, since the basic process of observing and selecting plants for desirable traits is accessible to participants without formal plant breeding training. (...) The challenge for plant breeders engaged in participatory research is to consider not only how their work incorporates farmer input in developing new varieties, but also how it interacts with broader questions of food sovereignty, food justice, diversity and democratization in the food system. This article examines these issues in the context of the Seed to Kitchen Collaborative, a participatory variety evaluation and breeding project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (shrink)

The evolution of cooperative breeding is complex, and particularly so in humans because many other life history traits likely evolved at the same time. While cooperative childrearing is often presumed ancient, the transition from maternal self-reliance to dependence on allocare leaves no known empirical record. In this paper, an exploratory model is developed that incorporates probable evolutionary changes in birth intervals, juvenile dependence, and dispersal age to predict under what life history conditions mothers are unable to raise children without (...) adult cooperation. The model’s outcome variable (net balance) integrates dependent children’s production and consumption as a function of varying life history parameters to estimate the investment mothers or others have to spend subsidizing children. Results suggest that maternal-juvenile cooperation can support the early transition toward a reduction in birth intervals, a longer period of juvenile dependence, and having overlapping young. The need for adult cooperation is most evident when birth intervals are short and age at net production is late. Findings suggest that the needs of juveniles would not have been an early selective force for adult cooperation. Rather, an age-graded division of labor and the mutual benefits of maternal-juvenile cooperation could be an important, but overlooked step in the evolution of cooperative breeding. (shrink)

The lack of importance traditionally ascribed to human-nonhuman animal relationships in the social sciences has meant that while commercial sex in the human realm has been well documented, very few socio-cultural studies of commercial sex involving nonhuman animals have been undertaken to date. However, the growing recognition that nonhuman, as well as human, animals are “actors” means that their role in the sex trade, becomes problematic and eminently worthy of academic attention. This article considers a very particular (...) instance of commercial animal sex—that practiced on stud farms in West Wales, where the breeding of autochthonous Welsh cobs is of immense political, social, economic, and cultural significance. This study found that in this context Welsh cobs are expected to embody specific gender ideals in what is an inherently inter-subjective relationship. Through their animals' performances, human caregivers are able to negotiate their own ideas about gender roles, and these in turn determine those individual animals used for breeding and those not. (shrink)

Despite pronouncements about the inevitable diffusion of artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies, in practice, it is human behavior, not technology in a vacuum, that dictates how technology seeps into—and changes—societies. To better understand how human preferences shape technological adoption and the spread of AI-enabled autonomous technologies, we look at representative adult samples of US public opinion in 2018 and 2020 on the use of four types of autonomous technologies: vehicles, surgery, weapons, and cyber defense. By focusing on these (...) four diverse uses of AI-enabled autonomy that span transportation, medicine, and national security, we exploit the inherent variation between these AI-enabled autonomous use cases. We find that those with familiarity and expertise with AI and similar technologies were more likely to support all of the autonomous applications we tested (except weapons) than those with a limited understanding of the technology. Individuals that had already delegated the act of driving using ride-share apps were also more positive about autonomous vehicles. However, familiarity cut both ways; individuals are also less likely to support AI-enabled technologies when applied directly to their life, especially if technology automates tasks they are already familiar with operating. Finally, we find that familiarity plays little role in support for AI-enabled military applications, for which opposition has slightly increased over time. (shrink)

Advancing women’s empowerment and gender equality in agriculture is a recognised development goal, also within crop breeding. Increasingly, breeding teams are expected to use ‘market-based’ approaches to design more ‘demand-led’ and ‘gender-responsive’ crop varieties. Based on an institutional ethnography that includes high-profile development-oriented breeding initiatives, we unpack these terms using perspectives from political agronomy and feminist science and technology studies. By conceptualising the market as an ongoing, relational performance made up of discourses, practices and human and (...) nonhuman actors, we trace how the market is understood as an effective socioeconomic institution for soliciting demand, but also becomes a normative agenda. Construed as a demand variable, the relational and structural dimensions of gender are rendered less visible, which might strengthen rather than transform power relations’ status quo. On the other hand, a feminist science and technology perspective broadens the field of vision not only to the gendered dimensions of crop breeding, but also to the nonhuman actors, such as the crops and traits falling outside the market sphere of interest. By putting political agronomy and feminist science and technology studies into conversation, the article contributes to the development of a feminist political agronomy. (shrink)

This essay examines the impact of the Great War on the breeding and showing of pedigree dogs in Britain. Hostility toward Germany led first to a decline in the popularity of breeds such as the dachshund, with both human and canine “aliens” targeted by nationalist fervor. Second, the institutions of dog breeding and showing came under threat from accusations of inappropriate luxury, frivolity, and the wasting of food in wartime, amounting to the charge of a want of (...) patriotism on the part of breeders. Third, the paper shows how the “dog fancy” responded to this “agitation against dogs,” turning on mongrels, stray dogs, and “useless” and unpatriotic humans, exposing deep divisions within the dog breeding community. By looking at the politics of the “dog fancy” in wartime, this paper extends the discussion of animals and national identity, arguing that while dogs could be used to articulate patriotic sentiments, their conditional citizenship meant that they were uniquely vulnerable at a time of national crisis. (shrink)

_A provocative examination of how unequal access to reproductive technology replays the sins of the eugenics movement_ Eugenics, the effort to improve the human species by inhibiting reproduction of “inferior” genetic strains, ultimately came to be regarded as the great shame of the Progressive movement. Judith Daar, a prominent expert on the intersection of law and medicine, argues that current attitudes toward the potential users of modern assisted reproductive technologies threaten to replicate eugenics’ same discriminatory practices. In this book, (...) Daar asserts how barriers that block certain people’s access to reproductive technologies are often founded on biases rooted in notions of class, race, and marital status. As a result, poor, minority, unmarried, disabled, and LGBT individuals are denied technologies available to well-off nonminority heterosexual applicants. An original argument on a highly emotional and important issue, this work offers a surprising departure from more familiar arguments on the issue as it warns physicians, government agencies, and the general public against repeating the mistakes of the past. (shrink)

To explain the evolutionary emergence of uniquely human skills and motivations for cooperation, Tomasello et al. (2012, in Current Anthropology 53(6):673–92) proposed the interdependence hypothesis. The key adaptive context in this account was the obligate collaborative foraging of early human adults. Hawkes (2014, in Human Nature 25(1):28–48), following Hrdy (Mothers and Others, Harvard University Press, 2009), provided an alternative account for the emergence of uniquely human cooperative skills in which the key was early human infants’ (...) attempts to solicit care and attention from adults in a cooperative breeding context. Here we attempt to reconcile these two accounts. Our composite account accepts Hrdy’s and Hawkes’s contention that the extremely early emergence of human infants’ cooperative skills suggests an important role for cooperative breeding as adaptive context, perhaps in early Homo. But our account also insists that human cooperation goes well beyond these nascent skills to include such things as the communicative and cultural conventions, norms, and institutions created by later Homo and early modern humans to deal with adult problems of social coordination. As part of this account we hypothesize how each of the main stages of human ontogeny (infancy, childhood, adolescence) was transformed during evolution both by infants’ cooperative skills “migrating up” in age and by adults’ cooperative skills “migrating down” in age. (shrink)

In addition to obviating the use of synthetic agrochemicals and emphasizing farming in accordance with agro-ecological guidelines, organic farming acknowledges the integrity of plants as an essential element of its natural approaches to crop production. For cultivated plants, integrity refers to their inherent nature, wholeness, completeness, species-specific characteristics, and their being in balance with their (organically farmed) environment, while accomplishing their “natural aim.” We argue that this integrity of plants has ethical value, distinguishing integrity of life, plant-typic integrity, genotypic integrity, (...) and phenotypic integrity. We have developed qualitative criteria to ethically evaluate existing practices and have applied these criteria to assess whether current plant breeding and propagation techniques violate the integrity of crop plants. This process has resulted in a design of a holistic, scientific approach of organic plant breeding and seed production. Our evaluation has met considerable criticism from mainstream (crop) scientists. We respond to the following questions: (1). Can ethics be incorporated into objective crop sciences? (2). What is the nature of the intrinsic value of plants in organic farming? We argue that criteria to take integrity into account can only be assessed from a holistic perspective and we show that a holistic approach is needed to design such ethical notions in a consistent way. The ethical notions have been further elaborated by formulating human responsibility and respect towards crop plants. Responsibility and respect can only be shown by providing crop plants the right to be nurtured and to express natural behavior at all levels of integrity. (shrink)

Humans routinely make many decisions collectively, whether they choose a restaurant with friends, elect political leaders or decide actions to tackle international problems, such as climate change, that affect the future of the whole planet. We might be less aware of it, but group decisions are just as important to social animals as they are for us. Animal groups have to collectively decide about communal movements, activities, nesting sites and enterprises, such as cooperative breeding or hunting, that crucially affect (...) their survival and reproduction. While human group decisions have been studied for millennia, the study of animal group decisions is relatively young, but is now expanding rapidly. It emerges that group decisions in animals pose many similar questions to those in humans. The purpose of the present issue is to integrate and combine approaches in the social and natural sciences in an area in which theoretical challenges and research questions are often similar, and to introduce each discipline to the other’s key ideas, findings and successful methods. In order to make such an introduction as effective as possible, here, we briefly review conceptual similarities and differences between the sciences, and provide a guide to the present issue. (shrink)

This paper examines the discourses and practices of pedigree livestock breeding, focusing on beef cattle and sheep in the UK, concentrating on an under-examined aspect of this—the deselection and rejection of some animals from future breeding populations. In the context of exploring how animals are valued and represented in different ways in relation to particular agricultural knowledge-practices, it focuses on deselecting particular animals from breeding populations, drawing attention to shifts in such knowledge-practices related to the emergence of (...) “genetic” techniques in livestock breeding which are arguably displacing “traditional” visual and experiential knowledge’s of livestock animals. The paper situates this discussion in the analytical framework provided by Foucault’s conception of “biopower,” exploring how interventions in livestock populations aimed at the fostering of domestic animal life are necessarily also associated with the imperative that certain animals must die and not contribute to the future reproduction of their breed. The “geneticization” of livestock breeding produces new articulations of this process associated with different understandings of animal life and the possibilities of different modes of intervention in livestock populations. Genetic techniques increasingly quantify and rationalize processes of selection and deselection, and affect how animals are perceived and valued both as groups and as individuals. The paper concludes by emphasizing that the valuation of livestock animals is contested, and that the entanglement of “traditional” and “genetic” modes of valuation means that there are multiple layers of valuation and (de)selection involved in breeding knowledge-practices. (shrink)

Malian farmers’ traditional system for managing seed of sorghum, an indigenous crop of vital importance for food security and survival, can be conceptualized as a commons. Although this system maintains a wide range of varieties and helps ensure access to seed, its ability to create and widely disseminate new varieties to meet evolving opportunities and challenges is limited. A network of farmer groups, public breeding programs, and development organizations collaborating in decentralized creation and dissemination of sorghum varieties in Mali (...) is examined regarding (1) how the network developed and what activities it conducts; (2) the resulting varietal diversity, varietal performance and organizational models; and (3) the elements of the traditional seed system that were maintained, strengthened or transformed. A single-case study approach was used that relies on published literature, official catalogues of released varieties and a database of farmer seed-cooperative requests for foundation seed. The functioning of the network and its varietal-, seed-, and organizational- outcomes are documented and the elements of the traditional sorghum seed system that are maintained or strengthened are analyzed. The evolution of the network’s reliance on commoning as a social process and its strengthening of core Seed Commons features are discussed with a view to the network’s contributions to targeted development outcomes and potential replicability. The case demonstrates how creating a framework for collaboration, enabling actors and organizations to take on collective responsibility while maintaining distributed decision-making at local level, opens opportunities for transforming farming- and food-systems towards sustainability and resilience. (shrink)

There are many ways that biological theory can inform ethical discussions of genetic engineering and biomedical enhancement. In this essay, we highlight some of these potential contributions, and along the way provide a synthetic overview of the papers that comprise this special issue. We begin by comparing and contrasting genetic engineering with programs of selective breeding that led to the domestication of plants and animals, and we consider how genetic engineering differs from other contemporary biotechnologies such as embryo selection. (...) We go on to consider the implications of genetic engineering for human nature, human evolution, and persistence of the human species. Finally, we question whether genetic interventions warrant the extraordinary ethical scrutiny they are often given, and we show how the misleading “genetic blueprint” metaphor has imposed a faulty structure on the enhancement debate. We conclude by considering the nature of biological development and the sobering limits it places on what genetic engineering can reasonably hope to achieve. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between innovation and resources that are governed as commons by looking at the governance of potato genetic resources, especially in the context of the emergence ofhybrid diploid potato breedingthat will enable potato propagation through true seeds. As a new breeding tool, hybrid diploid potato breeding may not only revolutionize traditional potato breeding practices, it may also strongly affect current governance modes of potato genetic resources as a commons. Contrary to conventional accounts of (...) the commons that treat technological innovation mainly as an exogenous factor, we argue that technological innovation can better be understood as an endogenous factor. In particular, we develop aco-production frameworkof innovation and the commons that draws attention to the different ways in which innovation, commons and its governance interact. Using this framework, we demonstrate that the constitution of potato genetic resources as a commons cannot be understood without considering the various ways in which technological innovation affects resources and mediate how these are governed. While reversely, technological innovations themselves are also enabled and constrained by users who govern potato genetic resources as a shared resource. We argue that changes in the governance of genetic resources can be understood as a change from one socio-technical constellation to another, whereby innovations, resources, and institutions are continuously co-produced. (shrink)

At a meeting of the American Society for Value Inquiry in Chicago last spring, and again at a conference on biomedical ethics last fall in London, Ontario, David J. Roy, Head of the Institute for Medical Humanities, University of Montreal, described a developing situation in the biomedical technologies about which he and many of his colleagues in the profession share an enormous apprehension. The biomedical sciences have in their possession, in development, and on the drawing boards a technology that has (...) the potential of enabling us to alter much of what has to date been seen as fundamental givens and fixed points of the human situation, from the forms of human reproduction, through the frequency of distribution of various human characteristics, to those very characteristics themselves. His question , in the form of a plea, was this: it is becoming desperately urgent that scientists and technologists in these fields be given guidance about what they are doing; the sense is that what can be done ranges far beyond what should be done, and that the technological imperative (do what technology makes possible) and the epistemological imperative (find a use for what we know) are so strong that, in the absence of a normative consensus of what it is to be human, these sciences and technologies may well have a transforming impact upon a society that is not prepared to control them. When it becomes possible to eliminate the traditional and biological form of human reproduction, with the development of in vitro fertilization and the artificial placenta, shall we? When it becomes possible to eliminate deleterious genes from the human gene pool (or to limit their occurrence to the level of chance mutation), shall we? When it becomes possible to enable parents to select in advance characteristics of their offspring, from sex to hair and eye color, and perhaps even to influence the polygenic determinate and determinable characteristics of race, stature, aggressiveness, intelligence and talent, to the point that we can influence the distribution of propensities and abilities in the population to fit more closely the manpower needs of our society, shall we? Shall we breed astronauts, musicians.. (shrink)

This article revisits a set of classic political, theological and economic scenes in the (early) modern debate on usury from Luther to Bentham. To summarize, I argue that this theory of usury – which polemically mobilizes counter-Aristotelian tropes of the breeding, reproduction and husbandry of money – might also be read as a theory of what Foucault famously calls pastoral power. If this debate nominally concerns the ‘repeal’ of the ancient prohibition against money-lending at interest, I argue that what (...) is really at stake here is the pastoral production of a new theory of the subject as ‘human interest’: a self whose allegedly intrinsic self-interest expresses itself paradigmatically through financial interest. In conclusion, I situate this genealogy of human interest within the larger history of the self-interested, capitalist and indebted subject from Hirschman, through Foucault, to Lazzarato. (shrink)

In discussing the effects of grandparents on child survival in natural fertility populations, Coall & Hertwig (C&H) rely extensively on the review by Sear and Mace (2008). We conducted a more detailed summary of the same literature and found that the evidence in favor of beneficial associations between grandparenting and child survival is generally weak or absent. The present state of the data on human alloparenting supports a more restricted use of the term Human stem family situations with (...) celibate helpers-at-the-nest can be described as cooperatively breeding, but the term is a poor fit to many human family systems. (shrink)

Fisher’s 1918 paper accomplished two distinct goals: unifying discrete Mendelian genetics with continuous biometric phenotypes and quantifying the variance components of variation in complex human characteristics. The former contributed to the foundation of modern quantitative genetics; the latter was adopted by social scientists interested in the pursuit of Galtonian nature-nurture questions about the biological and social origins of human behavior, especially human intelligence. This historical divergence has produced competing notions of the estimation of variance ratios referred to (...) as heritability. Jay Lush showed that they could be applied to selective breeding on the farm, while the early twin geneticists used them as a descriptive statistic to describe the degree of genetic determination in complex human traits. Here we trace the early history of the heritability coefficient now used by social scientists. (shrink)

Homo sapiens is a mammal of the order Primates. What most distinguishes primates from other mammals is their ability to cerebrate. Cerebration developed fastest among the Anthropoidea primates , and subsequently the hominids . The increase in brain mass only by Homo sapiens—and only over the past 10,000 years—possess superior Darwinian fitness: for the preceding 30 million years primates had played a rather marginal role in the world’s biological system.Homo sapiens’ success as the creator of developed civilization was possible only (...) thanks to his special adaptation capabilities, shaped by natural selection at the dawn of his existence.Primates first appeared in the Oligocene about 30 million years ago, and the first two-legged anthropoid, Australopithecus, about 6.5–5.7 million years ago. The transition from Australopithecus to the species we call Homo was in many ways an evolutionary milestone. Australopithecus was exclusively herbivorous and formed neither organized communities nor settlements. His successor, Homo erectus, on the other hand, possessed heretofore unknown skills like hunting and gathering, which considerably influenced both his lifestyle and his diet—he increasingly ate meat from cadavers or animals he had killed himself. Fossil remains of Homo erectus dating back two million years have been unearthed throughout Africa, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Middle East, and Europe.Homo sapiens derives from the rather small Homo erectus population in East Africa and has been the earth’s only hominid for a relatively short time about 10,000 years ago before he still shared his world with Neanderthal man and the diminutive Homo floresiensis.Despite racial differences there is surprisingly little variation in the human genome. We are all 99 percent genetically alike, moreover genome variations do not correlate to skin color.Homo sapiens’ hunter-gatherer lifestyle led him to seek solutions which today find application only in human communities. In time his biological capabilities were enriched by the skill of speech, this in turn helping to develop creativity, self-awareness, a sense of dignity, and group, ethnic and national loyalty, eventually leading to the emergence of religion as a path to life’s fundamental truths and an antidote to the everpresent fear of death.The Neolithic Revolution began about 10,000 years ago. Several thousand years later the evolution of farming and breeding led to the emergence of the first civilizations. The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture changed radically not only economic and social structures but, as speech developed, helped form civilizations and cultures.Over the past 2000 years humanity has changed the global environment but has itself remained unchanged in heritability. The awareness that despite all racial, ethnic, cultural, or linguistic differences we belong to an exceptionally homogeneous species, can be an inspiration for humanity to strive towards a universal civilization in which all these differences could be contained. (shrink)

A growing trend within feminist animal studies is to eschew the abolitionism/welfarism binary in favor of attending carefully to the politics of existing interspecies relationships in context. This literature maintains that domestication produces special interspecies relationships which generate ongoing responsibilities for human companions and communities. With the goal of clarifying how tending to these ongoing responsibilities to domesticated animals can qualify as enduring forms of interspecies justice, this paper unpacks the politics of these special relationships and obligations in context, (...) specifically, that of fancy rat breeders’ attempts to eliminate aganglionic megacolon. Contrasting fanciers’ efforts with those of laboratory breeders and researchers, I argue that what sets the fancy apart is its shared code of ethics and the loving, principled form of life from which it emerges. Furthermore, the knowledge that rats are worth loving not only enables fanciers to attend to the injustice of megacolon but facilitates transformative justice for domestic rats more broadly. (shrink)

It is well known that totem worship is an early product of human society, from which it can be argued that East and West share a common cultural origin, although totem worship cannot be identified as the initial origin of all human civilizations, it is the common premise from which all subsequent clans, tribes, and groups emerged. When societies face upheaval and change and breed conflict and chaos, salvation may be found in the common cultural origins of humankind. (...) This paper argues that both Durkheim and Confucius when faced with social anomie caused by the "crisis of European civilization" and the "collapse of ritual and music" (Libeng Yuehuai禮崩樂壞) respectively, traced their roots back to the sacredness of primitive witchcraft activities, including totem worship and the law of taboos, as the elixir of "healing" the society, which is "the same way"; However, due to the inherent differences in cultural background and subjectivity, the two have embarked on different paths of development and formed different social paradigms and interpersonal relationships, which are "different returns". (shrink)

Galton defined eugenics as the science of improvement of the human race germ plasm through better breeding and claimed that the study of agencies under social control which may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations should be pursued. Eugenic theoretical approaches and eugenic state political policies are deliberate intentions of adopting eugenic measures, whether or not they have been actually implemented and no matter how successful the results of those practices might have been. They involve (...) agents and goals to be achieved. Some eugenists intended that eugenic programmes should be enforced by state agencies; others defended that those programmes might be implemented on a voluntary choice. The eugenic consequences of practices that were not deliberately designed to have eugenic goals are also considered. This latter category is very often relevant while discussing eugenics as related to a number of new biotechnologies. The concern with eugenics today does not focus so much on the risks of population improvement programmes to be implemented by central powers; nevertheless, practices adopted by health institutions, insurance and legal agencies may lead to eugenic consequences. The social and eugenic implications of the Human Genome Project are discussed. (shrink)