In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work has evolved tremendously from its humble origins first as a seminar paper and then a Ph.D. thesis. Throughout this evolution I have benefited from the wise counsel, steadfast commitment, and good cheer of my colleagues , friends, and family. I was hesitant to pursue this project because American bioethics and science policy can be acrimonious affairs. I was afraid that I might be chewed up and spit out. Instead, I have had the good fortune to encounter only thoughtful,open-minded people in the course of my research. I believe this is because nearly everyone involved realizes the importance of these issues and wants above all to make a contribution to a serious and civil conversation about the ethics and politics of our worldtransforming scientific knowledge and technological powers . I hope that this book will advance that conversation. I wish to express my gratitude to everyone who has contributed to the profoundly educational experience of crafting this book. I am forever indebted to my friend and mentor Robert Frodeman,who diligently critiqued numerous versions of this text and provided insight and inspiration . His wisdom is matched only by the nobility of his soul, and often as we talked, dangling our feet in the clear and refreshing waters of Boulder Creek, I felt like the young Phaedrus with the great philosopher. Insofar as it succeeds in meeting the challenges of interdisciplinarity, this book is as much his as it is mine. I am also deeply grateful for the friendship and professional mentoring of Carl Mitcham. It has been my distinct ix honor to work with him on this book and numerous other scholarly endeavors . It is rare to find someone so learned and so humble, so distinguished and so generous. I am further thankful for the sharp, pragmatic, and ever-challenging intelligence of Roger Pielke. His insights were particularly helpful in thinking through chapter 6, but I have tried to emulate his critical mindset throughout the text. James White and Lisa Keranen were also on my dissertation committee, and I am grateful for their comments and for encouraging me to pursue this topic further as a book. I have worked on this book in two institutional homes. First, I bene- fited greatly from the resources at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In particular, I profited from countless conversations with fellow students including Shali Mohleji, Erik Fisher, Bets McNie, Genevieve Maricle, Jason Vogel, Nat Logar, Shep Ryen, Marilyn Averill, and Suzanne Tegen. Second, I have been supported by the Philosophy Department at the University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands. I am grateful to all of the members of this gad- fly humanities department in a technological, entrepreneurial university. I would also like to thank Mark Brown, Summer Johnson, Gregor Wolbring , Robert Cook-Deegan, Steve Fuller, and Jennifer Brian, all of whom offered valuable feedback and stimulating discussions when I presented various portions of this book at conferences and workshops. During my research, I attended some of the Kass Council meetings. I was pleased to find council members very approachable, and I am grateful for the opportunity to meet most of them. I am particularly thankful for the extended interviews granted by Leon Kass, Rebecca Dresser, Michael Gazzaniga, and Harold T. Shapiro, former chairman of NBAC. I found the council staff to be very helpful and professional, and I am especially indebted to Diane Gianelli for fielding my many queries and encouraging my efforts. Finally, I would like to thank the reviewers for University of Notre Dame Press whose criticisms and recommendations improved this work enormously. x Acknowledgments ...

Share