This essay represents a continuing update of the biopolitics bibliography (see Somit et aI., 1980; Peterson et al., 1982). We have recorded 93 items in our enumeration of biopolitical works which appeared in 1982. In this total are 1 book, 3 master's theses or doctoral dissertations, 30 published articles, monographs, or chapters in books, 49 conference papers, and 10 short commentaries (book reviews are not included in our tally).

Before his death in 2002, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould elaborated a large and inclusive theory of life's change. In this essay I concentrate on the aspects of Gould's vast theory that have the most direct political relevance. I briefly discuss his views on the philosophy of science. I examine the way he combined political values and methodology in a seamless, critical analysis of intelligence-testing and sociobiology. I concentrate most extensively on the impact his “punctuated equilibria” concept has made on contemporary political analysis, and I demonstrate that in their appropriation of this concept political scientists have violated the rules that Gould himself articulated for its use. In closing, I consider the possibility that a comprehensive theory of life, a theory that must include political values, might approach traditional questions of political thought more satisfyingly than has conventional philosophy.

In this article, we examine whether there is genetic overlap between personality traits and political participation, interest, and efficacy. We make several contributions to the literature. First, we use new data from a large sample of twins from Denmark to examine the link between genes, the Big Five traits, and political behavior. Previous research in this area has not examined the Danish context. Second, because our measures have some overlap with those used in previous studies, we are able to examine whether previous findings replicate in a different sample. Finally, we extend the literature by examining the possible genetic link between some personality and political traits that have not yet been explored. Overall, we find that genes account for a fairly large share of the correlation between two of the Big Five personality traits (openness and extraversion), political participation, and political interest. Thus, most of the relationship between these personality traits and our measures of political behavior can be accounted for by a common underlying genetic component.

Advances in embryology, genetics, and regenerative medicine regularly attract attention from scientists, scholars, journalists, and policymakers, yet implications of these advances may be broader than commonly supposed. Laboratories culturing human embryos, editing human genes, and creating human-animal chimeras have been working along lines that are now becoming intertwined. Embryogenic methods are weaving traditional in vivo and in vitro distinctions into a new “in vivitro” (in life in glass) fabric. These and other methods known to be in use or thought to be in development promise soon to bring society to startling choices and discomfiting predicaments, all in a global effort to supply reliably rejuvenating stem cells, to grow immunologically nonprovocative replacement organs, and to prevent, treat, cure, or even someday eradicate diseases having genetic or epigenetic mechanisms. With humanity’s human-engineering era now begun, procedural prohibitions, funding restrictions, institutional controls, and transparency rules are proving ineffective, and business incentives are migrating into the most basic life-sciences inquiries, wherein lie huge biomedical potentials and bioethical risks. Rights, health, and heritage are coming into play with bioethical presumptions and formal protections urgently needing reassessment.

Editor's Note. In this engaging talk given last February on a particularly cold and blustery day at Texas Tech University, Professor Gad Saad of Concordia University discusses his work in the area of evolutionary consumption. In making the case for understanding consumerism from a Darwinian perspective, Saad addresses several key tenets from his books The Consuming Instinct and The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption. In particular, Saad argues that: (1) many consumption acts can be mapped onto four key Darwinian modules (survival, mating, kin selection, and reciprocal altruism); and, (2) cultural products such as song lyrics and movie plotlines are fossils of the human mind that highlight a shared, biologically based human nature. In this wide-ranging inquiry, Saad summarizes several of his other empirical works, including the effects of conspicuous consumption on men's testosterone levels and how the ovulatory cycle in the human female influences consumption. Overall, Professor Saad contends that an infusion of evolutionary and biologically based perspectives into the discipline of consumer behavior and related government regulatory policies yields myriad benefits, notably greater consilience, more effective practices, an ethos of interdisciplinarity, and methodological pluralism.

In order to honor Tom Wiegele on the occasion of his retirement, we planned to carry in this issue a profile of his career and his contributions to our field. As the journal's founding editor and the association's founding executive director, Tom's extraordinary accomplishments deserved to be publicly applauded. We are all greatly saddened that Tom's sudden death from an aneurysm on August 9, 1991, just two days after a retirement celebration, has converted our profile into a tribute in memoriam. We share with Tom's family, his friends, his students, and his other colleagues our sorrow and our sense of loss over his premature passing.

Definitions being critical to systematic analysis, aggression is here defined as intentional injury to person or damage to property. The issue of consciousness of intent is considered. No claim is made that either conscious or unconscious aggression is necessarily wrongful, but that it is elicited with respect to the frustration of a variety of organically based physical and mental needs. Physiology has made progress toward understanding the two-way interaction between vertebrates and their environment, so that we have good hunches that aggressive behavior varies as a function of the level of several endocrines and of electrical charge in several parts of the brain. Suggestions are made for improving the utility of some basic political theory to physiological research and vice versa, so that social science can move beyond the speculations of the 18th century philosophers and can use some very relevant physiological findings.

Much research in social studies of science addresses scientists' interpretative flexibility in the construction of scientific knowledge. This flexibility is readily visible among different scientists' competing knowledge-claims as well as in their accounts across different social settings. This article illustrates this process and discusses some of its implications through a case study of descriptions of acid rain in published scientific papers and Congressional testimony. As acid rain was flexibly reconstructed in Congressional testimony, its meanings and implications for control legislation became more contested. Some descriptions of acid rain that were intended to usefully clarify the phenomenon actually contributed to an impression of scientific uncertainty, and thereby further polarized debate.

The accumulating scientific evidence — across many disciplines — regarding human evolution and the dualities and complexities of human nature indicates that the core ideological assumptions of both capitalism and socialism are simplistic and ultimately irreconcilable. A biologically grounded approach to social justice enables us to articulate a new ideological paradigm that I call “Fair Shares.” This paradigm consists of three complementary normative principles. First, goods and services should be distributed to each according to his or her basic needs. Second, surpluses beyond the provisioning of our basic needs should be distributed according to merit. And, third, each of us is obliged in return to contribute to the “collective survival enterprise” in accordance with his or her ability. Though none of these three principles is new, in combination they provide a biologically informed middle way between capitalism and socialism. Some of the many issues that are raised by this formulation are also briefly addressed.

The target paper of this invited forum has a vaulting ambition: to convince readers that we ought to attempt to reduce evil in our world by constructing an interdisciplinary program, which I call the Genetic Virtue Program (GVP), to enhance the biological aspects of virtue. Most of the contributors to this forum are not sympathetic to the project—to put it mildly. Yet, one of the surprising things, at least to this author, is that comparatively little is said about the paper's overall ambition. Jamie Bronstein offers the idea that better socialization may be key: “No one would argue that there have not also been great evils; but the historical record doesn't support the level of improbability for further moral improvement through socialization that Walker would like to assign.” However, nowhere do I claim that there is no prospect for further moral improvement through socialization. Indeed, in recently published work I specifically recommend that we improve socialization efforts to enhance virtue by tracking prosocialization efforts.

Leadership roles, as this study suggests, may lead to breakdowns in individuals who have performed well in more routine positions. When the demand for creativity is high, but the routes to success ambiguous and the end goals controverted, vulnerable individuals may take refuge in drink and engage in public displays which undermine their performance. Such individuals may continue to provide positive contributions to national policy formation. Their loss of control, however, even if it is only episodic, is likely to cause significant others in the environment to depreciate their entire role performance, contributing further to their loss of influence.

The future effectiveness of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) will be dependent largely on the introduction of an effective verification system. If such a system is to be effective, it will need to be underpinned by the expertise and reagents that have already been used to produce battlefield detectors for biological warfare (BW) agents. Samples for analysis could range from those taken from a fermenter vessel to samples taken from the environment surrounding the suspect facility. The analysis of such samples could be carried out in the field or at specialist laboratories. Specialist laboratories would offer a wider range of tests and a higher degree of test sensitivity; however, the problem of sample transport to the laboratory will need to be addressed. In the longer term, improved fieldable verification equipment could be developed.