Rethinking The Bse Crisis

In 1986, the emergence of a novel brain disease in British cattle presented a unique challenge to scientists. How that challenge was addressed has been the subject of a public inquiry and numerous academic studies conducted to date. However, none of these investigations has sought to examine the reasoning of scientists during this critical period in the public health of the UK. Using concepts and techniques in informal logic, argumentation and fallacy theory, this study reconstructs and evaluates the reasoning of scientists in the ten-year period between 1986 and 1996. Specifically, a form of presumptive reasoning is described in which extensive use is made of arguments traditionally identified as informal fallacies. In the context of the adverse epistemic conditions that confronted scientists during the BSE epidemic, these arguments were anything but fallacious, serving instead to confer a number of epistemic gains upon scientific inquiry. This book argues for a closer integration of philosophy with public health science, an integration that is exemplified by the case of scientific reasoning during the BSE affair. It will therefore be of interest to advanced students, academics, researchers and professionals in the areas of public health science and epidemiology, as well as philosophical disciplines such as informal logic, argumentation and fallacy theory and epistemology.

This book provides the first study of scientific reasoning during the BSE epidemic in the UK. It argues for a closer integration of philosophy within public health science, an integration exemplified by the case of scientific reasoning during the BSE affair.

Rethinking Risk and the Precautionary Principle challenges the claim that the precautionary principle is an appropriate guide to public policy decision-making in the face of uncertainty. The precautionary principle is frequently invoked as a justification for regulating human activities. From bans on the use of growth hormones in cattle to restrictions on children's playground activities, precautionary thinking seems to be taking over our lives. As the contributors to this book show, such an approach is of dubious utility and may even be counterproductive. This is a timely and important contribution to the debate on how to manage risk in the modern world. The editor, Julian Morris, is Director of the Environment and Technology Programme at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. He has written widely on issues relating to environmental protection and technological development. Up to date discussion of current issues and scientific controversies Challenges the claim that the 'precautionary principle' is an appropriate guide to public policy decisions

This visionary book takes stock of the urgent challenges facing food chains globally and provides a critical evaluation of radical new thinking and perspectives on agricultural and food policy. Wyn Grant investigates the principal drivers of change in food and agriculture, including globalization, climate change, the structure of the industry, changing patterns of consumer demand and new technologies.

The Proceedings of the Calgary History of Medicine Days can be seen as a Series in the History of Medicine and Health Care that publishes the work of young and emerging researchers in the field, hence providing a unique publishing format. The annual Calgary History of Medicine Days Conference, established in 1991, brings together undergraduate and early graduate students from across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe to give paper and poster presentations on a wide variety of topics from the history of medicine and health care from an interdisciplinary perspective. The History of Medicine Days offers an annual platform for discussions and exchanges between participants over recent research findings, methodological perspectives, or work-in-progress descriptions of ongoing historiographical projects. This book brings together a number of reviewed and edited conference papers, comprising topics from the history of health care systems, medical sciences, psychiatry and neuroscience, public health, and historical issues of gender in medicine. Furthermore, it includes the paper given by the conference’s internationally-renowned keynote speaker, Dr. Theodore M. Brown, Professor of History and Medical Humanities and Charles E. & Dale L. Phelps Professor of Public Health and Policy, University of Rochester, New York. It also comprises all of the abstracts of the conference for documentation purposes and is well illustrated with diagrams and images pertaining to the history of medicine.

This title is a re-examination of British policy towards the European Union including a fresh consideration of how change to a proportional representation electoral system might alter British preferences on Europe. It offers a wealth of primary data on economic and social acitivity with fellow EU members.

In today's world 'health' means far more than merely the absence of illness. In Rethinking Health Promotion Theodore H. MacDonald sweeps away the confusion surrounding the function and position of health promotion. He argues that, far from being a modern innovation, health promotion has existed as a distinct and separate enterprise for as long as biomedicine and cautions against health promotion becoming organized merely an off-shoot of medical care. Drawing on the author's experience as a World Health Organisation consultant, the book also tackles the question of whether health promotion has relevance on an international scale or whether it is purely a eurocentric phenomenon. Against this background individual chapters explore universal factors such as sexual health, diet, unemployment, alcohol and tobacco use. With its critical and historical approach this book breaks new ground in assessing health promotion and will be stimulating reading for the wide variety of students and professionals studying health promotion.

The Interfaces: Deriving and Interpreting Omitted Structures is a collection of never-before-published papers that explore the nature of the interfaces of syntax with semantics, phonology, and discourse. The papers investigate the various ways in which elliptical structures are related to these interfaces. As such, they not only make a valuable contribution to generative linguistic research but, more generally, help to deepen our understanding of the relation between form and meaning in natural language. In the book’s introductory chapter, the editors address general issues related to current work on ellipsis and the syntax/semantics, syntax/phonology and syntax/discourse interfaces. The rest of the book is organized into three parts. The first examines PF-deletion accounts of elliptical structures; the second investigates these structures from the perspective of the syntax/semantic interface; and the third explores these from a perspective that concentrates on the relation between semantics and focus and discourse structure. Together the papers collected in this volume offer a convincing demonstration of the value of collaborative research on the ‘interfaces’.