October 2007 AJOB
The latest issue of AJOB features two target articles:
Biotechnology and the New Right: Neoconservatism's Red Menace
by Jonathan D. Moreno, Sam Berger
"Show Me" Bioethics and Politics
by Myra J. Christopher
As always, each target article is accompanied by a group of peer commentaries. This month's issue also features two editorials: "Access for the Terminally Ill to Experimental Medical Innovations: A Three-Pronged Threat" by Shira Bender, Lauren Flicker and Rosamond Rhodes; and "A Clean Well Lighted Place: In Search of Food Ethics in the 21st Century Grocery Store" by Glenn McGee. The full text of the latter is available for free. Here's a selection:
Suffice it to say that people love food. Only slightly less interesting than sex, eating is the most natural thing humans do. Before any questions of aesthetics, ethics or politics take the stage, it seems fitting to suggest that people feel their finest when they are fully fed. Most of the behaviors we observe in animals before they eat, after they eat and when they are deprived of the pleasure of eating are mirrored in human behaviors. These same behaviors have taken on vast mythical significances throughout time in rituals celebrating the entanglements we have with food (Lévi-Strauss 1969).
Shopping for food is then a seductive experience. Every possible avenue for advertising is exploited to teach us not to think about food, but instead to develop "gut feelings" about various food products and brands. Pictures of "serving suggestions" on glossy packaging sell a brand name, a taste and feelings of safety and fullness and virility and success. The grocery story is a sensory odyssey for the hungry of body and spirit alike, who enjoy being sold food as much, if not more, than eating that food.
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