One of the subject areas most frequently explored in the pages of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics is research ethics. We return to this field again and again because we find that there are so many important and compelling questions to ask. With the ever-changing nature of science and medicine continuously providing new opportunities for research and discovery, it is imperative that we continue to explore the moral limits of research, and ask how and where ethics and the law can guide us on this important journey. In this issue we turn to our old friend Robert M. Sade of the Medical University of South Carolina and the Director of the Thomas A. Pitts Memorial Lectureship for the symposium “Controversies in Clinical Research Ethics.” As Sade writes in his introduction: “Over the nearly 300 years since the Newgate experiment, much research using human subjects has been hotly debated, and disagreements about the conduct of clinical research abound today. Choosing from a long list, six contemporary controversies were selected for discussion at the Twenty-Second Annual Thomas Pitts Lectureship in Medical Ethics. Those discussions form the substance of this symposium.” Among the contributors to this enlightening issue are Robert Schwartz, Mark J. Cherry, Susan M. Wolf, Lois Shepherd, John D. Lantos, Susan S. Ellenberg, and Steven Joffe. We think these terrific authors collectively have asked some very challenging questions, and in turn steer us towards some stimulating points of discussion.
In this issue you will also find our usual collection of independent articles, including one we found particularly interesting, Joanna Theiss and Marsha Regenstein's “Screening Practices for the Social Determinants of Health.” We also feature our two consistently excellent quarterly columns, “Currents in Contemporary Ethics” and “Public Health and the Law,” edited by our longtime friends Mark Rothstein and James Hodge, Jr., respectively. Additionally, this issue also features a book review, a feature that we hope to see returning to the pages of JLME from now on. To keep up with other future developments and projects that we are working on in JLME, please be sure to check out aslme.com, as well as our social media platforms on Facebook and Twitter. We hope you enjoy this issue, and as always we are deeply thankful to all of our members, subscribers, and readers for allowing us to bring each of these great issues of JLME to you.
