In biology,
- often biological defense mechanism, a form of adaptation that promotes the survivability of an organism by protecting it from its natural enemies. Also see chemical defense.
In law,
- a claim that some biological factor present in the defendant provides a defense against the accused crimes, as in the so-called Twinkie defense.
Famous quotes containing the words biological and/or defense:
“No further evidence is needed to show that “mental illness” is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be elucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)