Our special issues on neuroethics has been released online by Taylor and Francis and mails this week. The topic is ethics and the brain, and the collection is the best summer beach reading we could muster great, if we can be permitted some pride.

Led by a guest editorial from Alan Leshner, the target articles include “Imaging or imagining? A neuroethics challenge informed by genetics,” with open peer commentary by Science editor Don Kennedy, Ben Wilfond and colleagues, Lynette Reed et al, Paul Ford, Ray DeVries, Jocelyn Downie, Chris Buford, Bartha Knoppers and others.

Paul Root Wolpe, our own, Kenneth Foster and Daniel Langleben author “Emerging neurotechnologies for lie-detection: promises and perils,” an authoritative treatment of a set of issues surrounding forensic use of brain sciences. Open peer commentators include Hank Greely, Jon Moreno, Ronald Green, Ruth Fischback et al, Joe Fins, Tom Buller, Linda Glenn and others.

The authors of both target articles respond to their critics in (freely accessible) letters to us as well.

Other features in 5:2 include an In Focus piece on bulimia in the Terry Schiavo case, and reviews of Tim Murphy’s new research ethics book and of Jerome Kassirer’s attack on complicity with big business within medicine.

It is all available at bioethics.net.