1,720,978 research outputs found
Il problema delle leggi
No full textSi discute del problema se in biologia ci siano delle leggi di natur
L’informazione biologica
No full textSi discute del problema del significato di informazione in biologia e biomedicin
Can We Reduce Homology Across The Biological Hierarchy?
No full textSeveral claims have been made to reduce homology at one level of the biological hierarchy to homology at a lower level. At a strict inquiry, all these claims reveal their epistemological weakness, for no reduction between homologies at different levels of the biological hierarchy can be done straightforwardly. The centrality of the ‘homology’ concept for biology makes this an interesting case-study in illustrating once more the gap between reductionism, as a broad research program, and actual reduction, a sa stringent epistemological work
Embryos in the Italian Newspapers
No full textIn Italy, the popular referendum on assisted reproduction (12nd-13rd June 2005) marked the end of the primacy of the parliamentary dimension in the embryo debate that characterized most of the rest of Europe. Decisions about the status of the embryo and the limits of stem cell research were then made public and the Italian mass-media became a privileged arena of public debate on the embryo issue by being both source of information and persuasion. This makes Italian mass-media a particularly interesting object of study for whom would like to understand the relationship between embryo-research bioethics and the media. Especially if we take into account that public communication on those scientific issues can arguably play an important role in easily eliciting the idea that a new life has to be preserved from the formation of a new genome thereby favoring this bioethical position over other ones more compatible with embryonic stem cell research. After sketching out the context in which the popular referendum was done, this work presents the results of a first quantitative analysis on 98 selected articles that appeared in the major Italian newspapers before and during the popular referendum. It is shown among other things that: 1) arguments (similar to those already underpinned during the previous parliamentary debate) in favor of preserving embryo from the formation of a new genome are prevalent; 2) if embryo is the focus of the article, then scientific research claims are largely ignored
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