Bioethics and Biolaw through Literature (Law & Literature Book 2)

In recent years, the well-established field of human anthropology has been put under scrutiny by the new data offered by science and technology. Scientific intervention into human life through organ transplants, euthanasia, genetic engineering, experiments connected to the genetic code and the genome, and varied other biotechnologies have placed ethical beliefs into question and created ethical dilemmas. These scientific inventions influence our views on birth and death, on the construction of the body and its technical reproducibility, and have problematized the concept of the human persona. The purpose of bioethics, the science of life, is to find new values and norms which will be valid for a multicultural society. Bioethics is, today, a well-respected topic of research that has brought together philosophers and experts to discuss the limits of science and medicine. The aim of this book is to merge the two fields of bioethics and law (or biolaw) through the literary text, by taking into consideration the transformations of the concept of persona at which we have nowadays arrived. The new meaning of the term ‘persona’ represents in fact the final point of a long-standing quest for man's sense of his own being and human dignity, and of his capacity to live in social interrelations. The volume presents a wide range of perspectives, comprising methodological approaches, legal and literary aspects. * multidisciplinary studies discussing the impact of biotechnologies on human life, culture and self-perception * focus on highly relevant, up-to-date research questions * wide range of perspectives (comprising legal, ethical and literary questions)

In recent years, the well-established field of human anthropology has been put under scrutiny by the new data offered by science and technology. Scientific intervention into human life through organ transplants, euthanasia, genetic engineering, experiments connected to the genetic code and the genome, and varied other biotechnologies have placed ethical beliefs into question and created ethical dilemmas. These scientific inventions influence our views on birth and death, on the construction of the body and its technical reproducibility, and have problematized the concept of the human persona. The purpose of bioethics, the science of life, is to find new values and norms which will be valid for a multicultural society. Bioethics is, today, a well-respected topic of research that has brought together philosophers and experts to discuss the limits of science and medicine.

The aim of this book is to merge the two fields of bioethics and law (or biolaw) through the literary text, by taking into consideration the transformations of the concept of persona at which we have nowadays arrived. The new meaning of the term ‘persona’ represents in fact the final point of a long-standing quest for man's sense of his own being and human dignity, and of his capacity to live in social interrelations. The volume presents a wide range of perspectives, comprising methodological approaches, legal and literary aspects.

Introduction FROM A LEGAL PERSPECTIVE The Genetics of Law and Literature: What is Man? Ghostly Presences: The Case of Bertha Mason The Case of Conjoined Twins: Medical Dilemma in Law and Literature Vida Interminable: Patients and Family Members Between the Right to Live and the Obligation Not to Die Reading Beyond the Ratio: Searching for the Subtext in the “Enforced Caesarean” Cases FROM A LITERARY PERSPECTIVE Science Fiction and Bioethical Knowledge Shaping Personhood: Problems of Subjectivity and the Self in Shakespeare’s The Taming of The Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing On the Sciences of Man in Eighteenth Century English Literature and Art: Anatomizing the Self The Beyond: Science and Law in The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells Bio-Ethics Avant la Lettre: Ninenteenth-Century Instances in Post-Darwinian Literature Rhetoric, Lexicography and Bioethics in Shelley Jackson’s Hypertext Patchwork Girl One Monstrous Ogre and One Patchwork Girl: Two Nameless Beings A Serious Reading of Biotechnology in Japanese Graphic Novels: Weak Thoughts Regarding Ethics, Literature and Medicine Fulfilling Personhood at the Margins of Life: Anna Quindlen’s One True Thing “So what is a human being?” An Exploration of Personhood Through Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods The Problem of Liminal Beings in Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things “Murderous Creators”: How Far Can Authors Go? Fay Weldon’s The Lives and Loves of a She Devil: Cosmetic Surgery as a Social Mask of Personhood APPENDIX Mapping the Law: Reading Old Maps of Strasbourg as Representing and Constituting Legal Spaces and Places In today s world, the increasing progress in biotechnologies has paved the way for profound challenges to basic notions definingthe human existence. Paramount concepts, such as autonomy, dignity and the very assumption of human finitude, need to be reframed in the light of unprecedented innovations and possibilities. The multidisciplinary encounter of literature, bioethics and biolaw offers the opportunity to investigate the impacts on human life stemming from scientific potentialities and pretensions. The aim of this book is to merge the two fields of bioethics and law (or biolaw) through the literary text, by taking into consideration the transformations of the concept of persona at which we have nowadays arrived." In today's world, the increasing progress in biotechnologies has paved the way for profound challenges to basic notions defining the human existence. This book aims to merge the two fields of bioethics and law through the literary text, by taking into consideration the transformations of the concept of persona at which we have nowadays arrived.