Author Description

Schering Foundation Workshop Bioscience ↔ Society D. J. Roy, Center for Bioethics, Clinical Research Institute of Montreal, Canada B. E. Wynne, Centre for Science Studies and Science Policy, Lancaster University, UK and R. W. Old, Department of Biological Sciences, Warwick University, UK This volume documents an international and interdisciplinary workshop on the issue of how scientific communities should relate to the broader human community in free societies. New scientific capabilities can emancipate people from biological, moral, and social constraints, but there is uncertainty and controversy about the possible new forms of bondage these freedoms might enfold. The papers and discussions explicitly focus attention on possible threats to human and ecological integrity posed by advances in the life sciences. Equally explicit is the workshop discussion of the multiple disciplinary and institutional interactions between science and society. The ancient word ‘covenant’ is used to frame the question overarching the entire workshop. That is the question about the still largely unexplored critical process through which scientists, citizens, and our institutions must pass if we are to protect the inheritance of future generations. This volume consists of an introduction by the editors, twenty-three background papers representing divergent perspectives as well as conflicting value positions, and four group reports which reflect ideas and views from fifty participants from various scientific, humanist, and professional disciplines. We recommend this book to geneticists, philosophers, policymakers, politicians, science writers, lawyers, moral theologians, sociologists, psychologists, environmentalists, biotechnologists, science educators, and historians.