Preface.

• Author: Bopp, James, Jr.

The featured article in this edition of Issues in Law & Medicine, by law professor Janet L. Dolgin, Ph.D., J.D., Hofstra University School of Law, interprets the debate about abortion and the debate about embryonic research and therapeutic cloning as aspects of a larger history of ideas. She suggests that embryos increasingly stand for different truths in discourse about abortion on the one-hand and about embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning on the other. More specifically, she suggests that the contemporary debate about the meaning of the embryo in context both of abortion and of embryonic research bespeaks a widespread transformation in Western, and especially American, society during the last three or four decades. At base, that transformation involves displacement of an understanding of personhood, particularly in domestic settings that depended on the submersion of individualism with an understanding of personhood that values autonomous individuality and that envisions community as the consequence of individuals' distinct choices rather than as pre-existing, hierarchically structured whole.

The Verbatim section is a paper by David A. Prentice, Ph.D., on "Adult Stem Cells." This paper reviews the literature related to adult stem cells, including current and potential clinical applications. The focus is on human...