Breast Implants

This volume examines a major issue in the field of women's health: breast implants. At the core of the silicone breast implant controversy is the need for people to act amid the uncertainty about the health risks involved. The attempts of patients, physicians, drug manufacturers, and the others to seek and provide both information and influence makes communication central to this issue. The study discussed in this volume reveals the interrelation of public information and private decisions and how closely media and interpersonal relationships fit. By tracing one medical issue, that of silicone breast implants, across interpersonal, organizational, public relations, and mediated forums, this work demonstrates the many ways those communication channels overlap and inform one another.

Combining contributions from biologists and sociologists, Debating Biology takes a look at the relationship between biology and society as it is played out in the arena of health and medicine.

Arguments from Ignorance explores the situations in which the argument from ignorance (also known as the lack-of-knowledge inference, negative evidence, or default reasoning) functions as a respectable form of reasoning and those in which it is indeed fallacious. Douglas Walton draws on everyday conversations on all kinds of practical matters in which the argumentum and ignorantiam is used quite appropriately to infer conclusions. He also discusses the inappropriate use of this kind of argument, referring to various major case studies, including the Salem witchcraft trials, the McCarthy hearings, and the Alger Hiss case. This book makes an original contribution in the areas of argumentation theory and informal logic, contending that, despite its traditional classification as a fallacy, the argument from ignorance is a genuine, very common, and legitimate type of argumentation with an identifiable structure. But the book is also interdisciplinary in scope, explaining many widely interesting and controversial,subjects in artificial intelligence, medical education, philosophy of science, and philosophy of law in a clear way that makes it accessible to a broad range of readers.

Negotiating the terrain between techno-optimism and eco-pessimism, this work establishes the political connections between technologies of "the body," property, and the environment. Specific technologies of the body, such as surrogacy and in vitro fertilization, are examined in relation to their political and legal constructions. Next, Shevory analyzes private property as an evolving historical concept that implicates environmental and biological transformations with particular attention given to biotechnology cases. He then considers the body's appearance and its alterations through plastic surgery, dieting, or piercing as political constructions.