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13 Am. J. Bioethics 1 (2013)

handle is hein.journals/ajbio13 and id is 1 raw text is: The American Journal of Bioethics, 13(1): 1-2, 2013 Copyright c Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1526-5161 print / 1536-0075 online DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2013.747307 100th Issue Anniversary Editorial David Magnus, Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics You could say that Dolly the sheep gave birth to AJOB, that the journal issued from developing embryonic stem cells. In the late 1990s bioethics changed. While Art Caplan and some other bioethicists had appeared semiregularly in the media (particularly during periods of high controversy), cloning and stem cell research captured the public imagi- nation like few controversies before it. Media attention pro- duced interest among publishers. MIT Press (our first home) was interested in bioethics-to the tune of a new book series on the topic and interest in a new journal to be edited by Glenn McGee. When Glenn first told me about his discussions with MIT Press and described a vision for something that would be topical and cutting-edge, I communicated an idea I had been hoping to develop. My first publications as a graduate student in philosophy at Stanford had been in the jour- nal Behavioral and Brain Sciences-a journal that utilizes the format of having published target articles and open peer commentaries. This was enormously successful as a way of promoting interdisciplinary dialogue. Articles written by philosophers would have responses from linguists, psy- chologists, neurologists, and computer scientists. I thought it would be a perfect format for a multidisciplinary field like bioethics. Glenn's insight that this approach could be tied to developing Internet technologies to expand the scope of both contributors and readers was critical to the journal's rising success. This success required leaving MIT Press and migrating to the journal's new home at Taylor & Francis and a shift from a quarterly journal to a bimonthly and eventually our current monthly format. Paul Root Wolpe joined early on as associate editor, then co-editor and now serves as both senior advisor and editor-in-chief of his own journal in the AJOB family, AJOB Neuroscience. AJOB Primary Research was also then launched under editor-in-chief Robert Skip Nelson. The journal's format and Glenn's technological vision were certainly instrumental to its success. AJOB was a very early adopter of technology and a pioneer for having a heav- ily visited website, then a blog; more recently came a Face- book page, and then a Twitter account. Bioethics.net has been a huge part of the success of the journal. But the jour- nal also benefitted from leaders in the field committing to write in a startup journal with no established readership, and (initially) no indexing or impact factor. AJOB will al- ways be indebted to the individuals who made the journal's rise possible. John Robertson (then chair of the ethics com- mittee of ASRM) published his paper on preconception sex selection-a timely and relevant topic that gave us a media boost with our first issue. We published pr6cis of impor- tant books-including Todd Chambers book on narrative bioethics (also in issue number 1) and a chapter from Norm Daniels's book on distributive justice (in issue number 2). Christine Grady published the first of a number of influ- ential articles with us on the issue of payment of research subjects. These are only a few of the many examples of in- dividuals who shared their work by publishing with AJOB before we were established. From our many early contributors to the early members of the editorial board who helped us identify peer reviewers and open peer commentary (OPC) authors, we will always be grateful for their creation of a vibrant intellectual space for debate and discussion from across disciplines. The OPC format allowed up-and-coming bioethics scholars, as well as individuals outside of bioethics, to participate in the dis- course of the field. We broadened our book review section to include reviews of other media, such as films, blogs, and websites. I like to think that AJOB has contributed to the transformation of bioethics from a multidisciplinary field into a more interdisciplinary one. This is our 100th issue as a journal-and my second as the editor-in-chief. Given the role that stem cell re- search played in our birth, it is fitting that we devote our 100th issue to a special issue on stem cell research. Our two target articles reflect how far we have come on these topics. Induced pluripotent stem cell research-the abil- ity to reprogram differentiated adult stem cells to make them revert to a pluripotent state-seemed a distant sci- ence fiction possibility when AJOB launched. The use of human embryonic stem cells, perhaps utilizing cloning (i.e., somatic cell nuclear transfer), was clearly perceived as the future of the field. How times change. Our arti- cle by Marco Stier and Bettina Schoene-Seifert discusses the new moral status issues raised by the new technol- ogy. At the same time, the explosion of research in this area created an experiment in research ethics oversight-the Stem Cell Research Oversight (SCRO) committee. Hank Greely looks at the history of this development, how it ajob 1 Address correspondence to David Magnus, PhD, Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics, 1215 Welch Road, Modular A, Room 67, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. E-mail: dmagnus@stanford.edu

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