Editors|[rsquo]| Introduction (original) (raw)

If the first half of the twentieth century was a golden age for physics, the second half saw the coming of age of the life sciences. As we enter the twenty-first century, our individual and collective lives are being fundamentally altered by developments in cellular and molecular biology. The drivers of these developments, and the stakes in them, are not merely scientific-they are therapeutic, economic, political, ideological and ethical. Put another way, developments in genomics, stem cell research, pharmacology, neuroscience all raise questions, not just about the nature of living processes and their amenability to understanding and manipulation, but also about the forces and ambitions shaping progress in the life sciences themselves, and the ways in which the life sciences are transforming different societies, locally, nationally and globally, in a multitude of different practices from the clinic to the factory. This is not just a matter of social 'implications'-the term implies that the process of science research and the things it claims to know can be separated from issues of values, consequences and applications. If we have learned anything from the social sciences, it is that social and cultural beliefs, choices, hopes, priorities and assumptions are built into the structure of work of the life sciences, from the bench to the clinic. These include views about the importance of health as a social and personal good, the ethical acceptability of certain kinds of research, the relative possibilities of obtaining grants and funding for different kinds of work, ways to maximize returns on investment, the significance of biotechnology for the national economy, the relationship between the research priorities of the academy and those of industry, increasingly biochemically based assumptions about the nature of mental pathology, and much more. Historical and social research has shown us that these processes are often far from harmonious; that different groups, professions and interests are often deeply committed to different positions; that controversy is intrinsic to scientific development; and that the path of science is shaped by hard-fought conflicts and hard-won alliances among divergent forces. To recognize that science is a social practice is not to deny its scientificity or its validity, merely to accept the realities that generate knowledge and applications in our contemporary world. The stakes are high, no less so the imperative that all corners of the academy think carefully and well about those stakes. This is the major impetus behind the creation of Bio-Societies, the first journal committed to publishing original research and debate across the spectrum of the social studies of life science: sociology, anthropology, ethics, philosophy, law, history, economics, politics, public policy research, science and technology studies, and various interdisciplinary combinations of these. It is the goal of BioSocieties to give researchers an opportunity to present their work in a forum that will be read, not only by