Frontiers In Biomedicine

Traditional methods of medical education and training are changing rapidly. This volume integrates the printed text--as provided by leading experts in science and medicine--with multimedia applications using desktop conferencing and the Internet in the delivery of instruction. The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at The George Washington University Medical Center, with the support of an unrestricted educational grant from the Healthcare Education Department of Glaxo Welcome, Inc. , has created a distance-learning lecture series on the Internet for continuing medical education. In this lecture series, leading scientists and physicians discussed the most current as well as future projected treatments of prominent afflictions of mankind. These chosen speakers, who are at the forefront of research and treatment in the field of biomedicine, build a structural framework for the audience in their field of expertise, and from there looked into their crystal ball and discussed their view of the future. The lectures, approximately one hour in length, were broadcast live from The George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D. C. as part of the Department of Medicine Grand Rounds. These lectures will be available on the Internet until 2001. In partnership with Medical Consumer Media, the lectures were simultaneously broadcast live around the world via the Internet with real-time audio streaming and digitized 35mm slide presentation. The lecture format was designed to foster questions which went beyond basic science and current treatments.

This book provides readers with an integrative overview of the latest research and developments in the broad field of biomedical engineering. Each of the chapters offers a timely review written by leading biomedical engineers and aims at showing how the convergence of scientific and engineering fields with medicine has created a new basis for practically solving problems concerning human health, wellbeing and disease. While some of the latest frontiers of biomedicine, such as neuroscience and regenerative medicine, are becoming increasingly dependent on new ideas and tools from other disciplines, the paradigm shift caused by technological innovations in the fields of information science, nanotechnology, and robotics is opening new opportunities in healthcare, besides dramatically changing the ways we actually practice science. At the same time, a new generation of engineers, fluent in many different scientific “languages,” is creating entirely new fields of research that approach the “old” questions from a new and holistic angle. The book reports on the scientific revolutions in the field of biomedicine by describing the latest technologies and findings developed at the interface between science and engineering. It addresses students, fellows, and faculty and industry investigators searching for new challenges in the broad biomedical engineering fields.

A numerous internationally renowned authors in the pages of this book present the views of the fields of cell biology and their own research results or review of current knowledge. Chapters are divided into five sections that are dedicated to cell structures and functions, genetic material, regulatory mechanisms, cellular biomedicine and new methods in cell biology. Multidisciplinary and often quite versatile approach by many authors have imposed restrictions of this classification, so it is certain that many chapters could belong to the other sections of this book. The current frontiers, on the manner in which they described in the book, can be a good inspiration to many readers for further improving, and perspectives which are highlighted can be seen in many areas of fundamental biology, biomedicine, biotechnology and other applications of knowledge of cell biology. The book will be very useful for beginners to gain insight into new area, as well as experts to find new facts and expanding horizons.

The present book entitled “Novel Frontiers in the Production of Compounds for Biomedical Uses” can perhaps be placed in its best perspective by the Shakespearean character in The Tempest who exclaimed" What’s past is prologue”. Indeed, this compilation of some of the outstanding presentations in the field of biomedicine made at th the 9 European Congress on Biotechnology (Brussels, Belgium, July 11-15, 1999) not only reflects the achievements of the recent past, but provides a privileged glimpse of the biotechnology that is emerging in the first decade of the new Millennium. It is becoming increasingly apparent that biotechnology is offering biomedicine novel approaches and solutions to develop a sorely needed new generation of biopharmaceuticals. This is all the more necessary because in recent years, new diseases have emerged with extraordinary lethality in all corners of the globe, while age-related chronic illnesses have filled the gap wherever biomedicine has made successful inroads. The rise of antibiotic resistance also poses major threats to public health. Thus, as disease patterns evolve, the rational development of new drugs is becoming urgent, not only for the clinical outcome of patients, but also in optimising the allocation of scarce health care resources through the use of cost-effective productions methods. It is in response to all these challenges that biotechnology offers new strategies that go beyond the more traditional approaches. By the mid-1990’s, the number of recombinant products approved annually for therapeutic use reached double digits. With the advent of the genomics revolution.

How should judges and legislators address challenges arising at the frontiers of biomedicine? What if it became possible to edit the DNA of embryos for enhanced traits, gestate a fetus in an artificial womb, self-modify brain implants to provide new skills or bring a frozen human back to life? This book presents an innovative legal theory and applies it to future developments in biomedicine. This legal theory reconceptualises the role of legal officials in terms of moral principle and contextual constraints: 'contextual legal idealism'. It is applied by asking how a political leader or appeal court judge could address technological developments for which the current law of England and Wales would be ill-equipped to respond. The book's central thesis is that the regulation of human conduct requires moral reasoning directed to the context in which it operates. The link between abstract theory and practical application is articulated using future developments within four areas of biomedicine. Developments in heritable genome editing and cybernetic biohacking are addressed using Explanatory Notes to hypothetical UK Parliamentary Bills. Developments in ectogestation and cryonic reanimation are addressed using hypothetical appeal court judgments. The book will be of great interest to scholars and students of medical/health law, criminal law, bioethics, biolaw, legal theory and moral philosophy.

DIVA study of the mutually constituitive relations between Western biomedicine and Ango- American literature in the 20th and early 21st centuries, tracing the interwoven processes by which both fields have transformed the course of human life./div