In the last fifteen years a controversial new theory of the origins of biological complexity and the nature of the universe has been fomenting bitter debates in education and science policy across North America, Europe, and Australia. Backed by intellectuals at respectable universities, Intelligent Design Theory (ID) proposes an alternative to accepted accounts of evolutionary theory: that life is so complex, and that the universe is so fine-tuned for the appearance of life, that the only plausible explanation is the existence of an intelligent designer. For many ID theorists, the...

Animal experimentation is one of the most controversial areas of debate on animal rights. Biomedical research is at the hard edge of these debates: it throws up fundamental questions of moral value - of whether human life is more important than that of animals. Much experimentation is defended by its apparent success in terms of increasing medical knowledge. This study investigates whether biomedical research using animals is, in fact, scientifically justified. The authors show that in scientific terms - using the models that scientists themselves use - these claims are exaggerated, or even...

The central concern of this book is with the "prediction problem" in biomedical research. In particular, the authors examine the use of animal models to predict human responses in drug and disease research. The arguments discussed are drawn from both biological and biomedical theory (with numerous examples and case studies drawn from evolutionary biology, complex systems theory, oncology, teratology, and AIDS research), and analyses of empirical evidence (concerning, for example, data on intra- and inter-species differences revealed by recent results from genome analyses of various species,...