Quesenberry PJ, Stein GS, eds. (£65.00.) Wiley, 1998. ISBN 0 47114 656 0.

The importance of stem cell and gene therapy has been evident both to scientists and clinicians for some time, but increasingly it has become a very live issue for the general public. It is the focus of enormous investment by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies the world over, reflecting the novelty and the power of techniques that allow us to reach within the tissue or the genome itself to correct defects in a way never previously imagined possible.

Ethical debate is rightly vigorous and the advance of the new technology is raising new issues seemingly daily. The US congress is holding hearings to discuss legislation that would allow federally funded scientists to derive human embryonic stem cell lines, one of the basic requirements for stem cell therapy. With views ranging between Christopher Reeves's: “is it more ethical for a woman to donate unused embryos or let them be tossed away as garbage” to accusations of Nazi experimentation, the debate is heated, ethically complex and, …