As the media have recently reminded all Americans, biomedical capabilities that are being developed in this country and around the world present us with unfamiliar possibilities in human reproduction, from which flow unprecedented ethical, social and legal issues.

The transfer of a human embryo from one woman to another is one such possibility, though far from the only one. The time has come for a public examination of the full range of developments in reproduction from artificial insemination through in vitro fertilization to the freezing and banking of sperm, eggs, and embryos.

A half-page advertisement in the 1982 Yellow Pages of a large East Coast metropolis read: “The Podiatry Center. For information on foot health, call the following numbers….” The advertisement contained an address and some other information pertinent to foot health, but did not contain the names of any individual podiatrists.

Many podiatrists were angry be cause the “Podiatry Center” was not a hospital, podiatry school or any other kind of institution; instead, it was a doctors’ office. The advertisement, many podiatrists felt, was purposely misleading to the public, suggesting that the ‘Podiatry Center” was something more than just an office of individual podiatrists.

The recent growth of new forms of health care delivery has been encouraged by the increase in competition in the health care industry. Several factors account for this increase in competition. First, there is an overabundance of physicians in many areas of the United States. In addition, many overbedded hospitals now compete for the same patients to fill their beds. Finally, health maintenance organizations and other alternative delivery systems, such as ambulatory surgical care centers, ‘surgicenters,” and birthing centers, are capturing more of the patient market and reducing hospital inpatient utilization.

Employers, insurers, and the government, as the third-party payers who most often pay for an individual's medical care, hope to take advantage of this new competitive environment and to moderate the increase in their health care expenditures.

Guardianship has traditionally been presented by courts and in the literature as a benevolent mechanism through which those who cannot protect themselves will be assisted through surrogate management of their assets, their persons, or both. While notice has been taken of the significant deprivation of property and liberty inherent in a total guardianship, authorities recognize the sad necessity of imposing plenary external control over some of us when sufficient need is shown. The power to do so is grounded in the state's police power and the traditional role of the state as parens patriae.

School health nursing in the United States began in 1902 when a school nurse named Lina Rogers was placed in four New York City schools. Her work and that of twenty-five other nurses hired a month later quickly reduced the number of children excluded from school for communicable diseases from 10,567 in September 1902 to 1101 in September 1903. The number of excluded children could be reduced so dramatically because the school nurse was available to educate parents and staff and because she was able to make home visits to known cases of disease.