Controversies In Science And Technology: From Maize To Menopause (SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN SOCIETY) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0299203905 ISBN 13: 9780299203900

Verlag: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Written for general readers, teachers, journalists, and policymakers, this volume explores four controversial topics in science and technology, with commentaries from experts in such fields as sociology, religion, law, ethics, and politics:

* Antibiotics and Resistance: the science, the policy debates, and perspectives from a microbiologist, a veterinarian, and an M.D.

* Genetically Modified Maize and Gene Flow: the science of genetic modification, protecting genetic diversity, agricultural biotech vesus the environment, corporate patents versus farmers' rights

* Hormone Replacement Theory and Menopause: overview of the Women's Health Initiative, history of hormone replacement therapy, the medicalization of menopause, hormone replacement therapy and clinical trials

* Smallpox: historical and medical overview of smallpox, government policies for public health, the Emergency Health Powers Act, public resistance vs. cooperation.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Daniel Lee Kleinman is associate professor of rural sociology at the University of Wisconsin?Madison and author of Impure Cultures: University Biology and the World of Commerce. Abby J. Kinchy is research assistant in rural sociology at UW?Madison. Jo Handelsman is the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and codirector of the Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute at UW?Madison.

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Controversies in Science and Technology

From Maize to Menopause

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

Copyright © 2005 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-299-20390-0

Contents

Acknowledgements..............................................................................................................................................................................................xiIntroduction: From Maize to Menopause Abby J. Kinchy, Daniel Lee Kleinman, and Jo Handelsman.................................................................................................................3Part 1: Overuse of Antibiotics on the Farm1 Antibiotic Resistance: The Agricultural Connection Christine Mlot.........................................................................................................................................232 Agricultural Antibiotics: Features of a Controversy Brian Martin..........................................................................................................................................373 Agricultural Uses of Antibiotics: Evaluating Possible Safety Concerns Abigail A. Salyers..................................................................................................................524 Antibiotics in Animal Agriculture: An Ecosystem Dilemma Randall S. Singer.................................................................................................................................675 The Impact of Antibiotic Use in Agriculture on Human Health and the Appropriate Public Policy Response Tamar Barlam......................................................................................83Part 2: Genetically Modified Crops: Global Issues6 Genetic Modification and Gene Flow: An Overview Allison A. Snow...........................................................................................................................................1077 Introduction of Transgenic Crops in Centers of Origin and Domestication Paul Gepts........................................................................................................................1198 Agricultural Biotechnology Science Compromised: The Case of Quist and Chapela Kenneth A. Worthy, Richard C. Strohman, Paul R. Billings, and the Berkeley Biotechnology Working Group.....................1359 Hard Red Spring Wheat at a Genetic Crossroad: Rural Prosperity or Corporate Hegemony? R. Dennis Olson.....................................................................................................15010 Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environmental Challenge Peter H. Raven................................................................................................................................169Part 3: Hormone Replacement Therapy and Menopause: Science, Culture, and History11 Postmenopausal Hormones: An Overview Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller...........................................................................................................................................18112 The Medicalization of Menopause in America, 1897-2000: Mapping the Terrain Judith A. Houck................................................................................................................19813 The History of Hormone Replacement Therapy: A Timeline Barbara Seaman.....................................................................................................................................21914 Symptom Reporting at the End of Menstruation: Biological Variation and Cultural Difference Margaret Lock..................................................................................................23615 Evidence-based Medicine and Clinical Practice David L. DeMets.............................................................................................................................................254Part 4 Smallpox and Bioterrorism16 Smallpox: The Disease, the Virus, and the Vaccine Dixie D. Whitt..........................................................................................................................................27317 The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act: A Tool for Public Health Preparedness Lesley Stone, Lawrence O. Gostin, and James G. Hodge Jr...............................................................28318 The States and the War against Bioterrorism: Reactions to the Federal Smallpox Campaign and the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz.................................29719 Public Resistance or Cooperation? A Tale of Smallpox in Two Cities Judith Walzer Leavitt..................................................................................................................311Contributors..................................................................................................................................................................................................327Index.........................................................................................................................................................................................................335

Chapter One

Antibiotic Resistance

The Agricultural Connection

Christine Mlot

Dairy cows with symptoms of mastitis typically receive penicillin to stop the infection. Similarly, farmers administer tetracycline to swine and poultry to suppress respiratory diseases. Bacterial infections in catfish on fish farms and in pear trees in orchards are treated with tetracyclines or other antibiotics too. And to boost their rates of growth, healthy livestock routinely consume small doses of antibiotics in manufactured animal feeds.

As the Stanford University microbiologist Stanley Falkow has remarked, the biosphere is, in effect, bathed in a dilute solution of tetracyline, and roughly half of the one million metric tons of antibiotics (Davies 2000) in the solution have entered through the food supply (World Health Organization 2000). Most conventionally grown poultry, pork, and beef in the United States is produced with the help of antibiotics at some point. As with humans, animals are given the drugs to eliminate infections or prevent imminent ones. More controversial is the routine use of small but long-term doses of antibiotics to hasten the animals' growth to market size. Such use accounts for most of U.S. agriculture's share of antibiotics (Levy 1998; Mellon, Benbrook, and Benbrook 2001).

The use of antibiotics in agriculture, producer groups say, has given consumers an abundant and affordable supply of food, especially meat. But the intensive use of antibiotics comes with a cost. Antibiotics kill bacteria or stop them from growing by disrupting the cells' machinery. At the same time, antibiotic use selects for bacterial cells containing genes that allow the cells to disable or evade the drugs, most of which are also used to treat human infections. The resistance genes can be transferred through foodborne bacteria or other means to the human intestine and have been linked to drug-resistant infections in people and even to several deaths (World Health Organization 2000). Although the misuse of antibiotics in human medicine is also a big contributor to the development of resistance-an estimated half of antibiotics prescribed are unnecessary (Levy 1998)-agriculture's contribution cannot be dismissed.

Public health-monitoring programs are turning up increased frequencies and spread of resistant bacteria that cause...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Wisconsin Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0299203905
• ISBN 13: 9780299203900
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 341
• Herausgeber: Kleinman Daniel Lee, Kinchy Abby J., Handelsman Jo
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar