A recent amicus brief in the latest abortion case at the Supreme Court claims biologists agree on which point in fetal development marks the beginning of a human life. They don’t. And as a biologist and philosopher, I have been watching lawmakers and players in the national abortion debate make claims about biology for many years.
Author: Sahotra Sarkar
Sahotra Sarkar is a professor in the departments of philosophy and integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin. Before coming to Texas, he taught at McGill University and held fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science at Berlin, and the Dibner Institute at MIT.
Sarkar specializes in the history and philosophy of science, environmental philosophy, conservation biology and disease ecology. He is the author of six books, including Biodiversity and Environmental Philosophy (Cambridge, 2005), Environmental Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) and Systematic Conservation Planning (co-authored with Chris Margules, Cambridge, 2007) and more than 200 articles, mostly in philosophy and conservation biology.
His new book Cut-and-Paste Genetics: A CRISPR Revolution will be published in September 2021.