Biomedicine and the Human Condition
Challenges, Risks, and Rewards

This 2005 book presents a panoramic view of the challenges, ethical issues and rewards surrounding biomedical advances in human biology.

Michael G. Sargent (Author)

9780521833660, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 March 2005

364 pages, 7 b/w illus. 5 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.8 cm, 0.6 kg

'Michael Sargent offers an extremely thorough account of the scientific background to improvements in healthcare that followed achievements in clinical research and drug discovery in the 20th century. … [He] offers food for thought about the evolution of medical research and practice.' The Times Higher Education Supplement

How to avoid disease, how to breed successfully and how to live to a reasonable age, are questions that have perplexed mankind throughout history. This 2005 book explores our progress in understanding these challenges, and the risks and rewards of our attempts to find solutions. From the moment of conception, nutrition and exposure to microbes or alien chemicals have consequences that are etched into our cells and genomes. Such events have a crucial impact on development in utero and in childhood, and later, on the way we age, respond to infection, or the likelihood of developing chronic diseases, including cancer. The issues covered include the powerful influence of infectious disease on human society, the burden of our genetic legacy and the lottery of procreation. The author discusses how prospects for human life might continually improve as biomedicine addresses these problems and also debates the ethical checkpoints encountered.

Preface
1. Challenge, risk and reward: learning to control our biological fate
2. Learning to breed successfully
3. How life is handled
4. Cells in sickness and health
5. Experiences in utero affect later life
6. Infection, nutrition and poisons: avoiding an unhealthy life
7. Signs of ageing: when renovation slows
8. Cancer and the body plan: a Darwinian struggle
9. Fighting infection
10. Are devastating epidemics still possible?
11. Discovering medicines: infinite variety through chemistry
12. Protein medicines from gene technology
13. Refurbishing the body
14. Living with the genetic legacy
15. Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Medical anthropology [PSXM], Human biology [PSX], Evolution [PSAJ], Bio-ethics [PSAD], Life sciences: general issues [PSA], Pre-clinical medicine: basic sciences [MF], History of medicine [MBX], Health systems & services [MBP], Public health & preventive medicine [MBN]