Preface.

The featured article in this edition of Issues in Law & Medicine provides a masterful elucidation of Locke's medical ethics based in part on original writings and on historical and circumstantial evidence. Locke, the philosopher, who died 300 years ago on November 7, 1704, was physician, surgeon, and scientist by education, formal and informal. In honor of this anniversary of Locke's death, Bradford William Short, historian, philosopher, and legal scholar, teases out the significant historical facts to develop his thesis and to provide a much needed correction to modern mispronouncements on the subject of Locke's philosophy of inalienable rights, medical ethics, and views on abortion and assisted suicide. In this carefully crafted and tightly reasoned article, Short examines the evidence from Locke's medical education and the Hippocratic Oath, to the bubonic plague in London.

The second article, by Fr. Robert Barry O.P., Ph.D., explains the rationale and significance of the March 20, 2004, papal allocution on caring for persons in a "vegetative state." The purpose of this allocution was to promote and protect the dignity of patients, even when they are in a seriously ill and disabled state. To promote the dignity of these patients, the Pope explicitly stated that "quality of life judgments" were not to be applied to the administration of nutrition and hydration. The Holy Father made it clear that he was avoiding any position that could be construed as tolerating, permitting, or promoting euthanasia by omission. His statement sought to prevent Catholics and Catholic health care facilities from becoming involved in euthanasia by omission that has become a fast-growing threat.

The Verbatim section includes two items of interest. The first is the statement of Pope John Paul II entitled "Life-sustaining Treatments and...