Alabaster, oyster white or gypsum? Favorite jeans, revel blue or down pour? For many DIYers, choosing a paint color for a room or house can feel downright daunting. In deciding on a shade of white or blue, experts advise painting a swatch in the actual space because the way that light illuminates a space affects one’s perception of its “true” color.

Such advice is aptly applied to the celebration, in September 2024, of the 25th anniversary of the AMA Journal of Ethics and its predecessors.¹ From its beginning as an ethics section within msJAMA, the AMA Journal of Ethics has grown into a distinct, editorially independent, peer-reviewed publication that has striven to publish content—much offered with continuing education credit—that sheds light on topics of ethical relevance and importance in health and health care. In each monthly issue, which is freely available to all, cross-disciplinary experts, scholars, and artists aim to illuminate complex questions and ideas often overlooked in traditional ethics curricula. Take, for example, this month’s issue, which examines, through insightful commentaries, engaging podcasts, and provocative artwork, What do good science and ethics require of human-centered research using nonhuman animals?

In motivating the journal’s long-standing mission to “illuminate the art of medicine,” we see it as our ongoing editorial responsibility to help readers and listeners gain a deeper appreciation and truer understanding of ethics in the often fraught and complicated enterprise of caring for patients and the public. Given the climate of social and political polarization and rampant misinformation and disinformation in which health care is practiced today, the AMA Journal of Ethics’ illumination of the shades of ethics is needed more than ever—and may it continue to be a source of insights to make health care better.

Let there be light.