Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T01:38:24.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Back to the future Reflecting on the legacies of Lynton K. Caldwell, Robert H. Blank, and Andrea Bonnicksen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Amy L. Fletcher
Amy L. Fletcher*
Affiliation:
Political Science Programme, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 8015, New Zealand. [email protected]
Get access

Extract

Reviewing the work of Lynton Caldwell, Robert Blank, and Andrea Bonnicksen is both a privilege and a challenge. These three scholars rank among the key figures in the development of biopolicy as a legitimate research and teaching subfield within political science. Each of them worked in academia, on significant bioethical advisory boards, and with policymaking entities, and also contributed to numerous externally funded research projects. Across long and prolific careers, Caldwell, Blank, and Bonnicksen engaged seriously with the political, social and ethical issues raised by significant advances in many bio-scientific domains. This essay analyzes several of their works across two broad themes: 1) the development of the subfields of biopolitics and biopolicy, and 2) the tension between science policy and democratic governance. While each of them wrote significant and well-received books, the focus here is on insights to be gleaned from an idiosyncratic selection of their scholarly articles across the time period, 1966 to 2007. To borrow Michel Foucault's term, this brief and necessarily selective archaeology of the published journal record nevertheless demonstrates the significance, durability and prescience of the authors' insights. (I expect that at least one, if not all three, of these authors might raise objections to the mention of Foucault, but the term “archaeology” in this instance is apt.)

Type
Founders' Forum
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , Spring 2011 , pp. 65 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Blank, Robert H., “Biopolicy: A restatement of its role in politics and the life sciences,” Politics and the Life Sciences, 1982, 1(1): 38–42.Google Scholar
2. Caldwell, Lynton K., “Will biology change politics? A commentary,” Politics and the Life Sciences, 1982, 1(1): 44–45.Google Scholar
3. Sokal, Alan and Bricmont, Jean, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science (New York: Picador, 1999).Google Scholar
4. Waldby, Catherine, “Stem cells, tissue cultures, and the production of biovalue,” Heatlh: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 2002, 6(3): 305–323.Google Scholar
5. Rabinow, Paul and Rose, Nikolas, “Biopower today,” Biosocieties, 2006, 26(1): 195–217.Google Scholar
6. Rabinow, Paul, “Artificiality and enlightenment: From sociobiology to biosociality,” in The Science Studies Reader, Biagoli, Mario, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 407–416.Google Scholar
7. Palsson, Gisli and Rabinow, Paul, “Iceland: The case of a national human genome project,” Anthropology Today, 1999, 15(5): 14–18.Google Scholar
8. Becker, Gary and Murphy, Kevin M., Social Economics: Market Behavior in a Social Environment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
9. Quoted in Cohn, Jonathan, “Irrational exuberance: When did political science forget about politics,” The New Republic, October 25, 1999, http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/Kayser/TNR%20Cohn.pdf, accessed September 30, 2011.Google Scholar
10. “Biotechnology Scholars Program,” Georgia State University, http://biology.gsu.edu/2833.html, accessed October 3, 2011.Google Scholar
11. “Neuroscience and Public Policy Program”, University of Wisconsin, Madison, http://npp.wisc.edu/admissions.html, accessed October 3, 2011.Google Scholar
12. Caldwell, Lynton K., “Report from the public policy committee,” Politics and the Life Sciences, 1982, 1(1): 87–88.Google Scholar
13. Caldwell, Lynton K., “Is humanity destined to self-destruct?” Politics and the Life Sciences, 1999, 18(1): 3–14.Google Scholar
14. Blank, Robert H., “Regulatory rationing: A solution to health care resource allocation,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1992, 140(5): 1573–1596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15. Caldwell, Lynton K., “Managing the scientific super-culture: The task of educational preparation,” Public Administration Review, 1967: 128–133.Google Scholar
16. Caldwell, Lynton K., The Administrative Theories of Hamilton and Jefferson: Their Contribution to Thought on Public Administration. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago (Chicago, IL, 1944).Google Scholar
17. Caldwell, Lynton K., “Biology and bureaucracy: The coming confrontation,” Public Administration Review, 1980, 40(1): 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18. Caldwell, Lynton K., “Megacrisis and the need for a science of man,” The American Biology Teacher, 1972, 34(8): 443–448.Google Scholar
19. Healy, Patrick D. and Rimer, Sara, “Furor lingers as Harvard chief gives details of talks on women,” New York Times, February 18, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/education/18harvard.html, accessed September 30, 2011.Google Scholar
20. Watson, James, “To question genetic intelligence is not racism,” The Independent, October 19, 2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/james-watson-to-question-genetic-intelligence-is-not-racism-397250.html, accessed September 30, 2011.Google Scholar
21. Hamer, Dean H., “Genetics and male sexual orientation,” Science, 1999, 285(5429): 803.Google Scholar
22. “‘Warrior gene’ predicts aggressive behavior after provocation,” Science Daily, January 23, 2009, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090121093343.htm, accessed September 30, 2011.Google Scholar
23. Blank, Robert H., “Judicial decision making and biological fact: Roe v. Wade and the unresolved question of fetal viability,” Western Political Quarterly, 1984, 37(4): 584–602.Google Scholar
24. Blank, Robert H., “Human sterilization: Emerging technologies and reemerging social issues,” Science, Technology & Human Values, 1984, 9(3): 8–20.Google Scholar
25. Blank, Robert H., “Policy implications of the new neuroscience,” Cambridge Quarterly of Health Care Ethics, 16: 169–180.Google Scholar
26. Blank, Robert H., “The brain, aggression, and public policy,” Politics and the Life Sciences, 2006, 24(1–2): 12–21.Google Scholar
27. Bonnicksen, Andrea, “In vitro fertilization: A women's political issue,” International Political Science Review, 1987, 8(2): 147–154.Google Scholar
28. Bonnicksen, Andrea, “Demystifying germ-line genetics,” Politics and the Life Sciences, 1994, 13(2): 246–248.Google Scholar
29. Bonnicksen, Andrea, “A commentary on four papers on surrogate motherhood,” Politics and the Life Sciences, 1990, 8(2): 195–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
30. Bonnicksen, Andrea, “Creating a cloning policy in ninety days: In search of a cloning policy,” Politics and the Life Sciences, 1997, 16(2): 304–308.Google Scholar