1. This technique involves the insertion of a hollow needle through the abdominal and uterine walls of a pregnant woman into the amniotic sac, and withdrawing fluid and cells shed by the fetus.
2. In Research on Human Subjects (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1973), Bernard Barber and co-authors comment that, “the recent increase of concern in the biomedical research community. (about) the possible or actual abuse of the subjects of medical experimentation and medical innovation. can be seen perhaps most clearly in the dramatic rise of medical journal articles devoted to facets of this problem” (p. 2). Barber and his colleagues report that in a survey they made of articles listed in Index Medicus over the period 1950 to 1969, those that dealt with the ethics of biomedical research on human subjects increased “in both the absolute number and the proportion of articles in this area. The figure begins to get large in 1966” (pp. 2–3).
3. This is the week when I happened to be writing this section of my paper. In that sense, it was chosen randomly.
4. For an excellent review-essay of the scope and content of the burgeoning literature on ethical and existential aspects of medicine published during the decade 1960–70, see J. R. Elkinton,’ The Literature of Ethical Problems in Medicine’ (Parts 1, 2 and 3), Annals of Internal Medicine 73, Nos. 3, 4 and 5, November, 1970, pp. 495–498, 662–666 and 863–870.
5. 5. Among the major works on death and dying that have appeared are: Herbert Bailey, A Matter of Life and Death, New York (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1958)