John Harris is Sir David Alliance Professor of Bioethics at the Institute of Medicine, Law, and Bioethics, University of Manchester. In 2001 he was the first philosopher to have been elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He has been a member of the Human Genetics Commission since its foundation in 1999. The author or editor of fourteen books and over 150 papers, his recent books include Bioethics (Oxford University Press, 2001), A Companion to Genetics: Philosophy and the Genetic Revolution, co-edited with Justine Burley (Blackwell, 2002), and On Cloning (Routledge, 2004).

Louise Irving was formerly at the Institute of Medicine, Law, and Bioethics at the University of Manchester, where she was a research fellow on a three-year project, funded by the European Commission, which seeks to develop a legal and ethical framework for stem-cell research. She has written on the commodification of the human body, the relationship between analytic moral philosophy and bioethics, and issues of public health. Her main research interest is in the nature of freedom.