Rights and Liberties in the Biotech Age is the first book reaching broadly into biotechnology that imbeds the issues into a rights framework for the social management of technology. The contributors to the volume comprise prominent university scientists, civil rights lawyers, and public interest activists who bring their perspectives to issues where science and civil liberties meet head on. This book explores the impact of new genetic technologies on how people define their "personhood" and their basic civil liberties. It questions the thesis of "scientism" where "rights" must adapt and conform to technological changes. Instead, the authors explore the expansion of human rights in the face of new biomedical and bio-agricultural advances so that "rights" and not "technologies" are at the forefront of discussion.

Author Biography

Sheldon Krimsky is professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University and adjunct professor of family medicine and community health at the Tufts Medical School. Peter Shorett is director of programs at the Council for Responsible Genetics and writes in a variety of venues on the economics and politics of science.