Biomedical choices are emerging as critical policy issues of the 1980s. Political pressures for cost containment, trends toward corporate medicine, and continuing problems of access and equity ensure biomedical issues a prominent place on the policy agenda. Students of political science should be familiar with the array of biomedical technologies that currently are challenging the tenets of medicine as well as the capacity of political institutions to resolve the resulting policy dilemmas. Based on this, a course in biomedical policy is overdue. This article outlines a course which is designed to clarify the public policy dimensions of biomedicine and develop analytical skills in the students so that they can better cope with these issues of public and personal importance. It describes some of the approaches and methods that I have found useful and summarizes a few of the problems one might expect to encounter in teaching biomedical policy.

This article is divided into three parts: “Faculty Preparation: Immersion in the Literature,” “Conceptualizing and Organizing the Course,” and “Course Design.” The first part is addressed particularly to readers without access to a computer search of the literature. It suggests resource materials for each of the technologies. It also speaks to the meanings of and approaches which may be used to study biopolitics. Biopolicy is the approach used in the course.

The second part addresses the problem of finding a unifying concept which would bring cohesion to the multiple and diverse materials and issues. It also includes the statement of purpose and course objectives. It is here that the development of identifying and demonstrating the nexus between the reproductive technologies and public policy begins. It also discusses methodologies used in the course.

The third part lists the activities that served as a guide in designing the course and cites remaining caveats in course development. The paper concludes with statements about required reading materials, review materials, audio-visual aids, and a broad outline of the course.

This article describes some aspects of an Italian didactic-pedagogic experiment about interaction between “town” pupils and natural environments. The project's general philosophy is to try to make pupils aware of our condition as “biocultural beings,” as results of biological, technological, and cultural co-evolution. The presence of extensive natural, cultural, and technological resources at the site where the experiment takes place favors such an awareness.

Some examples of teaching techniques designed especially to introduce pupils to the difficult but necessary subject matter of co-evolution are also described. Such teaching techniques have as their main goal to make the pupils themselves able to construct a logical network of questions, rather than in teachers giving them already prepared answers.

The as yet unresolved problems, which concern the training of teachers steeped in traditional methods, are also briefly described.

One consequence of aging is diminished physical powers. In some cases, mental capabilities deteriorate, with concomitant rigidity of thought, impairment of intellect, emotional instability, and denial of disability (e.g., Post, 1980). Some have speculated that biological factors may have an effect on the political behavior of the elderly (see, e.g., G. Schubert, 1983). Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes (1960:262) note that decline of voter turnout with age is “… undoubtedly due to infirmities that make trips to the polling place more difficult.” Hudson and Binstock (1976:370) suggest that lowered participation “… may be interpreted in terms of physical declines….” Light (1981:2343) hypothesizes that “Health and mobility problems apparently prevent the elderly from topping the middle-aged in turnout.” On the other hand, Wolfinger and Rosenstone (1980) find that with the introduction of controls for length of residence, income, education, and gender, the political effects of aging seem to disappear. However, no direct tests of the physical effects of aging upon the political orientations and behavior of the aged have appeared.

Nurses, as other life science students, have been prejudiced against politics, imagining that it only contaminates techno-scientific enterprises. However, the new, professional nurse is aware of the need for political understanding and political skills. The transformation of the socio-economic status of the health care industry from a social service to a business provides an excellent opportunity for introducing the nursing student to political thought in a positive conjunction with practical analysis.

To generate a credible metapolitical framework, I embrace rather than avoid the current problems about the nature of the subject matter of politics. An aggressive, philosophically informed attack on the myth of autonomous, objective science opens the student's intellectual map of reality, and lays the groundwork for a proposed (paradoxical) complementarity of the two traditional models: politics as a science and politics as a humanity. This uncomfortable, middle ground position, abandoning any global Rationalism, again makes historical and contemporary case studies a relevant—in fact essential—part of political education. This is an effective approach to introducing the nursing student, whose education is dominated by classical, rationalistic, scientific images, to political studies.

Due to the prevailing paradigms in the social sciences and humanities and due to some traditional reservations against biology in Germany, biopolitics is facing particular difficulties in German political science. At the University of Düsseldorf, the only place where biopolitics is taught in Germany, students take courses which deal explicitly with biopolitical topics or learn about biopolitics in seminars and lectures devoted to other aspects of political behavior. There are difficulties in teaching biopolitics; some will arise wherever biopolitics is taught, while some may be specific for Germany. These difficulties require special teching efforts in order to motivate the students; some experience in dealing with these problems has already been gained. As far as the desirable participation in research projects and the practical application of biopolitical knowledge in particular professions is concerned, there are some possibilities, but still too few. Besides working with students on biopolitical questions, there are useful opportunities of teaching biopolitics outside the university, especially in adult political education and in political consulting.

The article describes a course entitled “Biosocial Approaches to Political Theory,” which is currently being taught at Griffith University. Course orientation, pedagogy, assessment strategy, teaching aids, and course bibliography are described. The humanities milieu of the course produced collegial friction whose management by the instructor is discussed. The legitimacy dispute arising from the friction led to a public controversy in the national media. The politics of that dispute are analyzed.

There are several noteworthy aspects to 1985. First, the triennial congress of the International Political Science Association was held (in Paris). Second, full panels on biology and politics were featured at four regularly scheduled political science meetings—the American Political Science Association, the International Political Science Association, the Western Political Science Association, and the New York State Political Science Association—an increase from just two the year before. Third, three dissertations are either completed or in progress: a decided improvement after such little activity in that area in 1984. Fourth, over 10 percent of the works appearing were by non-United States political scientists, reflecting a continuation of their greater visibility over the past few years. Fifth, several works were produced by two different teams of researchers that have received substantial support from federal research grants (Masters and colleagues; J. Schubert, Wiegele, and Hines). Finally, there is a continuing influx of new entrants into the ranks of biopolitical scholars (we tally 25 for the year).