Contributors

BARRETT SEAMAN and PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT, who co-edited this week's comprehensive 44-page report on the future of medicine, boast impressive resumes in such projects. Seaman, TIME's special-projects editor, has overseen two recent special issues on medicine and last October's look at a week in the life of a hospital. Elmer-DeWitt, TIME's science editor, has written cover stories on gene therapy and cloning. But when they began framing the topic of this issue, they realized they would need expert assistance. "We decided to focus on genetics, which is the area of research likely to have the greatest impact on how medicine is practiced in the future," says Elmer-DeWitt. "But it's a complex field that's moving quickly." The two editors invited a parade of working scientists from around the world to brief the staff members. "We were able to bring the whole group up to speed on state-of-the-art technologies and theories," says Seaman. The resulting effort, coordinated by Andrea Dorfman, chief reporter of the science section, offers an unblinking look at the promises, risks and eccentric personalities shaping the field. "There's plenty of good news here," says Seaman, "but we don't shy away from the sobering ethical questions."

JAMES D. WATSON, who contributed an essay on why genetic engineers must ignore the naysayers and forge ahead, is famous even among those who barely made it through high school biology for his and Francis Crick's 1953 discovery that DNA molecules arrange themselves in a double helix. That breakthrough earned them a Nobel Prize and made it possible to trace at the molecular level how cells organize hereditary information. In October, Watson drove in from the Long Island, N.Y., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he has worked for nearly three decades, to speak to TIME's reporters and editors. Elmer-DeWitt used the opportunity to invite Watson to write the package's closing essay. "He's an icon of molecular genetics," says Elmer-DeWitt. "And unlike many scientists, he is a lucid and engaging writer."

IAN WILMUT became the world's best-known embryologist in early 1997, when he and his team at Scotland's Roslin Institute announced that they had cloned a mammal, a lamb named Dolly, from the single cell of an adult sheep. But the science that produced Dolly also gave rise to disquieting questions that still rattle ethicists and policymakers. Managing editor Walter Isaacson met Wilmut at the annual Forstmann Little seminar in Aspen, Colo., last September and engaged him in a lively conversation on the ethics of cloning. "Wilmut expressed his concern that the breakthrough he had wrought would be used by others with no thoughtful moral or legal guidelines," says Isaacson, who promptly recruited Wilmut to write the essay on the subject that appears in this week's issue.

MICHAEL LEMONICK, DICK THOMPSON and CHRISTINE GORMAN are three of TIME's most experienced and versatile science journalists. Lemonick, who has written cover stories on topics ranging from killer microbes to biblical archaeology, says the lead story on the race to map the human genome was particularly fascinating as it mixed pure science with human emotions. "When scientists tamper with the basic machinery of human existence," he says, "they can get very involved." A relative newcomer to molecular genetics, Lemonick was relieved to have Washington-based Thompson share the story's reporting and writing. Thompson, who has followed the field since 1980, made a special effort to get inside the laboratory--and the mind--of controversial gene hunter Craig Venter, whom he profiles in this week's issue. Meanwhile, senior writer Gorman was taking field trips to pharmaceutical research labs for her story on drug discoveries. "This is an exciting area to track," she says, "because gene research is revolutionizing this industry."