Life Sciences & Society Program

Faculty from many MU departments and programs are engaged in crucial research on the ethics, history, policy, economics, law, sociology, and media coverage concerning the life sciences, as well as on the social manifestations of the human status as an organism. The Life Sciences & Society Program seeks to enhance the value and scope of such research on campus by making connections across disciplines.

We are currently updating our research postings. See below for a sample of past research in the field.

Back to Department List

Recent Scholarship - Philosophy

Paul Weirich, "Government Regulation of Genetic Engineering," (accepted for publication in Conference Proceedings of Oklahoma State Univ. conference on "Genetic Enhancement")
Peter Markie, "Harmless Wrongs," Ratio (forthcoming)
André Ariew (in press). "Adaptationism and its Alternatives: Explaining origins, prevalence, and diversity of

organic forms." Denis Walsh (ed.) 25 Years of Spandrels.
André Ariew (in press). "Teleology." David Hull and Michael Ruse (eds.) Cambridge Companion to Philosophy

of Biology.
André Ariew (in press). "Population Thinking." David Hull and Michael Ruse (eds.) Oxford Companion to

Philosophy of Biology.
M. Matthen and André Ariew (2005). "How To Understand Causal Relations in Natural Selection: Reply to

Rosenberg and Bouchard." Biology and Philosophy, Vol. 20, No. 2-3, pp. 355-364.
André Ariew and R. Lewontin (2004). "The Confusions of Fitness." British Journal for the Philosophy of

Science, 55, 347-363.

Recent Scholarship - Political Science

N. Patrick Peritore & Ana Karina Galve-Peritore, Biotechnology in Latin American: Politics, Impacts and Risks (SR Books 1995).

Recent Scholarship - Law

Philip G. Peters, Jr., How Safe is Safe Enough? Obligations to the Children of Reproductive Technology. (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Philip G. Peters, Jr. & Thomas Lambert, "Legal Barriers to Consumer Information Regarding Genetically Modified Foods" in The Ethics and Policy of Labeling Genetically Modified Food (Paul Weirich ed., Oxford, forthcoming 2008).
Philip G. Peters, Jr., "The Ambiguous Meaning of Human Conception," 40 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 199 (2006).
Philip G. Peters, Jr., "Obligations to Future Persons," Encyclopedia of Bioethics (3rd edition, 2003).

Recent Scholarship - Sociology

Amit Prasad, "The (Amorphous) Anatomy of an Invention: The Case of Magnetic Resonance Imaging," Social Studies of Science, (forthcoming).

Amit Prasad, "Social Adoption of a Technology: Magnetic Resonance Imaging in India," International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 43, No. 2, October 2006, p. 327-355.
Amit Prasad, "Beyond Modern versus Alternative Science Debate: Analysis of Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research," The Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 41, No. 3, January 2006, p. 219-227.
Amit Prasad, "Facts, Fetishes, and the Parliament of Things: Is there any Space for Critique?" (with Srikanth Mallavarapu), Social Epistemology, Vol. 20, No. 2, April-June 2006, p. 185-199.
Amit Prasad, "Confronting the "Socialization" Barrier: Cross-Ethnic Differences in Undergraduate Women’s Preference for IT Education" (with Roli Varma & Deepak Kapur). In William Aspray and J. McGrath Cohoon (eds.), Women and Information Technology: Research on Under-Representation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), p. 301-322.
Amit Prasad, "Scientific Culture in the "Other" Theatre of "Modern Science": An Analysis of the Culture of Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research in India," Social Studies of Science, Vol. 3, No. 3, June 2005, p. 463-489.
Amit Prasad, "Making Images/Making Bodies: Visibilizing and Disciplining through Magnetic Resonance Imaging," Science, Technology and Human Values, Vol. 30, No. 2, April 2005, p. 291-316.
http://lssp.missouri.edu/research.php?location=2