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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Darwin At The Drugstore? Testing The Biological Fitness Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria, Alan L. Gillen, Sarah Anderson
Darwin At The Drugstore? Testing The Biological Fitness Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria, Alan L. Gillen, Sarah Anderson
Alan L. Gillen
The issue of antibiotic resistance in bacteria is growing. For example, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a leading human pathogen. New strains of MRSA are resistant to methicillin and numerous other antibiotics, placing the patient in significant danger. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control revealed in 2007 that the number of deaths due to MRSA exceeded that of AIDS in the United States. It is no wonder that antibiotic resistance is one of the most significant and important health care issues. The ability of bacterial pathogens to evade traditional antibiotics is faster than the drug makers’ ability to make new …
Law And Biology: Toward An Integrated Model Of Human Behavior, Owen D. Jones
Law And Biology: Toward An Integrated Model Of Human Behavior, Owen D. Jones
Owen Jones
As first year law students unhappily discover, the meaning of "law" is frustratingly protean, shifting by usage and user. Depending on whom you ask, law is a system of rules, a body of precedents, a legislative enactment, a collection of norms, a process by which social goals are pursued, or some dynamic mixture of these. Law's principal purpose is to define and protect individual rights, to ensure public order, to resolve disputes, to redistribute wealth, to dispense justice, to prevent or compensate for injury, to optimize economic efficiency, or perhaps to do something else. And yet one thing is irreducibly …
On The Nature Of Norms: Biology, Morality, And The Disruption Of Order, Owen D. Jones
On The Nature Of Norms: Biology, Morality, And The Disruption Of Order, Owen D. Jones
Owen Jones
This essay discusses the legal implications of bio-behavioral underpinnings to norms, morality, and economic order. It first discusses the recent book "The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order," in which Francis Fukuyama explores the importance of evolved human nature to the reconstruction of social order and a thriving economy. It then addresses the extent to which we can usefully view law-relevant norms as products of evolutionary - as well as economic - processes.
Law And Behavioral Biology, Owen D. Jones, Timothy H. Goldsmith
Law And Behavioral Biology, Owen D. Jones, Timothy H. Goldsmith
Owen Jones
Society uses law to encourage people to behave differently than they would behave in the absence of law. This fundamental purpose makes law highly dependent on sound understandings of the multiple causes of human behavior. The better those understandings, the better law can achieve social goals with legal tools. In this Article, Professors Jones and Goldsmith argue that many long held understandings about where behavior comes from are rapidly obsolescing as a consequence of developments in the various fields constituting behavioral biology. By helping to refine law's understandings of behavior's causes, they argue, behavioral biology can help to improve law's …