Robert Dreyfuss ("The Lie Factory") is a long-time Washington journalist and a contributing writer for Mother Jones. His last cover story for the magazine focused on the neoconservative plan to topple Saddam Hussein and reshape the Middle East ("The Thirty-Year Itch," March/April 2003).

Jason Vest ("The Lie Factory") is a Washington reporter whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, the American Prospect, and the Village Voice.

Mark Dowie ("Gods and Monsters") discovered this story about the paradox of the chimera patent while researching a longer article on the patenting of life-forms. Dowie is a former publisher and editor of Mother Jones and teaches a graduate course in scientific writing at the University of California, Berkeley.

Laurie Abraham ("Anatomy of a Whistleblower") is an editor-at-large for Elle and author of the award-winning book Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: The Failure of Health Care in Urban America. Her journalism has appeared in such publications as the New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Salon.

Adam Hochschild ("Against All Odds") is a writer and a founding editor of Mother Jones. The most recent of his five books, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His article in this issue is based on his forthcoming book about the British anti-slavery movement, which will be published by Houghton Mifflin this fall.

Michael Scherer ("The Soul of the New Machine") is the magazine's Washington correspondent. His latest story, "The Making of the Corporate Judiciary" (November/December 2003), investigated the campaign to make federal courts more pro-business.