In this issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics we are proud to present the symposium “International Collaborations: The Future of Health Care,” guest-edited by Jaime S. King and Joanna Manning. As COVID-19 continues to make abundantly clear, we live in an ever-shrinking world where national boundaries and policies of health isolationism count for little, if they ever did count for much at all, for people’s health. Professors King (a former ASLME President) and Manning explain in their introduction that “this special issue comprises ten articles that propose various forms of international collaborations that can shape the future of health in terms of how we respond to public health emergencies, address legal and ethical challenges arising from advances in health information use and technology, and promote health equity and the inclusion of diverse voices in health decision-making.” As JLME itself continues to grow its international readership in recent years, with help from our colleagues at Cambridge University Press, we will continue to explore topics of international scope, through symposiums like this, through independent, unsolicited articles, and our quarterly column “Global Health Law,” ably edited by our friends Benjamin Mason Meier and former JLME Editor and ASLME Executive Director Lawrence O. Gostin.
Speaking of JLME column editors, I also must note that our Winter 2022 issue marked the end of my friend Mark A. Rothstein’s long and extraordinarily successful tenure as the editor of the “Currents in Contemporary Bioethics” column. Mark has the perhaps ignominious honor of being the longest-tenured person ever associated with JLME; indeed his CCB column was fully in place and running before I began my own two-decade (and counting) stewardship of the Journal. In that time Mark has supplied one insightful, thoughtful column after another, many written by him, with others written by a diverse and talented cast that he himself recruited. Many of those authors wrote their first piece for JLME in the CCB column, only to later become regular contributors to the journal at large. While Mark continues his outstanding teaching and research career (with, perhaps, the occasional submission to JLME) his monthly contribution to our journal will be deeply missed, and we thank Mark and all of our column editors for their wonderful work.
