Military Vaccination Programs undoubtedly arouse suspicions about potential threats from biological weapons (BW). Those countries that still vaccinate their armed forces against smallpox signal that they suspect their potential enemies might plan to use smallpox against them, whilst the other side suspects them of planning a preemptive smallpox strike. The same applies to military vaccination against any other dual-threat agent (unless the vaccination involves only troops being deployed in endemic areas, in which case the interpretation is less clear).

The Vaccines for Peace (VFP) proposal (Geissler, 1992) has been discussed, inter alia, by Graham Pearson and Oliver Thränert (this issue), as well as by Milton Leitenberg (1992a; 1992b) and other participants at the Biesenthal workshop (see Morse, this issue).

This Political Science course, titled “Policy Issues Surrounding Biotechnology,” set out to describe, explain, and evaluate public policies that regulate and support applications of biotechnology in agriculture and medicine. Only a few students had a basic familiarity with biotechnology and none had a strong science background. Most of the 25 political science and journalism students took the junior-senior level course not because of an interest in biotechnology but because they wanted to study a specific policy issue in some depth. The students jointly prepared a 56-page report and presented it to a panel of Missouri state legislators in a mock legislative hearing in April, 1991.

The Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research has two primary aims: (1) to develop and refine theoretical frameworks for understanding relationships between biology, law, and human social behavior; and (2) to develop new ways to facilitate the integration of biological theories and findings in law, economics, and public policy.

Advances in biomedical research and health care simultaneously create practical benefits and ethical dilemmas. These bioethical dilemmas are the subject of intense social and political debate. Recent attempts in the United States to address these issues in a national, public policy setting have had mixed success. The absence of a single national voice has resulted in many voices at many levels. This article describes and analyzes past national bioethics bodies in an effort to find commonalities for both success and failure. It concludes that reconstitution of an Ethics Advisory Board within the Department of Health and Human Services and the formation of a President's Bioethics Commission are needed as the nation confronts new and difficult choices in research ethics and the delivery of health care.

To update the view of human nature that undergirds eighteenth-century British/American political economy, this article reviews literature from diverse subfields of psychobiology. Findings on the structure, function, and evolution of the human brain confirm the duality between reason and passion that is at the core of the science of Hobbes. Contemporary findings across fields indicate that people become emotionally attached to objects, including verbal abstractions, through experiences with pleasure and pain. In contrast, human reasoning is essentially scientific. The duality between passionate motivation and humanity's unique capacity for reasoning makes political science important. By applying the scientific method to the subject of politics, people can design institutions that channel quasi-rational behavior toward outcomes that are mutually beneficial, rather than mutually destructive. Defining human nature correctly is the key to political science, and Smith's addition of the passion of sympathy to Hobbes's narrow definition of human motivation is essential.