The Terry Schiavo case has sparked intense debate on euthanasia in the United States and throughout the world. Numerous moral, ethical and legal issues have been raised. If a person is in the vegetative state, and has no hope of improvement, should he or she be kept alive? Who should decide whether the treatment necessary…
Today’s scientists can’t stay anymore closed in their labs just caring about their experiments. New actors are moving on the science’s stage asking to finally meet and know each other: next to the “insiders” we find mass media, policy makers and public. The new landscape generates a double need: promoting a deeper mutual understanding and…
Biotechnology and Democracy: participative processes and techno-scientific innovation. An issue much debated in recent years, and which highlights the tension between science and society, and the consequent inability of the conventional political organizations to mediate between their claims, is the question of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The uncertainty of whether the introduction of GMOs in…
“BIOpop” results of the combination of the words “BIOthechnology” and “POPular”: the name of this European project refers to its aim of bringing Science from the laboratories into the streets. Being aware of the need of citizens to know more about Science, which increasingly influences their lives, the intention of the young European Biotechnology researchers…
On the 25th of August, Superquark, the most important Italian popular scientific tv programme, hosted by Piero Angela, presents the Observa Science in Society Observatory new issue on the role of both the family and the scientific education in the growth of young people. The Science in Society Observatory, an initiative of Observa in cooperation…
An issue much debated in recent years, and which highlights the tension between science and society, and the consequent inability of the conventional political organizations to mediate between their claims, is the question of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The uncertainty of whether the introduction of GMOs in agriculture is safe or unsafe for human health…
With increasing frequency, science finds itself involved in an endeavour to understand and interpret the most distinctive domains of human experience, like feelings and emotions. Following the major advances achieved in genetics and biomedicine, the idea has spread that many aspects of our emotional experience, from shyness to aggressiveness, are biological in origin and depend…
In the framework of the First European Science in Society Forum 2005,.six different events known as “mirror sites” took place in Europe. Among them, the Observa’s First Italian Forum on Science and Society and Living with Learning – Public and Science day 2004, organised by the association Vetenskap & Allmänhet – Public and Science in…