Authors respond to “How Should Physicians Care for Dying Patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis?” by arguing that patients’ motives for accessing death with dignity laws should be thoroughly explored and that temporarily limiting patient autonomy can promote well-being at the end of life.

Responding to “Added Points of Concern about Caring for Dying Patients,” authors argue that physicians’ refusal to prescribe lethal drugs in accordance with states’ death with dignity laws could damage patient-physician relationships and harm patients.

Regulations’ negative influence on patient-physician relationships can be mitigated by innovation in decision science.

Clinician-researchers deeply invested in data gathering are still obliged to respect a patient-subject’s right to stop being in research.

Improving candidate evaluation and informed consent is key to motivating authenticity, not just voluntariness.

Empathic communication skills help motivate understanding of safety, significance of harms, impact on succeeding generations, and social consequences.

Not all cultural traditions have the same conception of personhood. In Confucianism, self-individuation takes place only through engagement with others in the context of one’s social roles and relationships.

The history of Western medicine chronicles a tension between ideologies of patient care—the holistic Hippocratic view and the specialization view, with a depersonalization of the patient that coincides with the rise of pathologic anatomy in the early modern era.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics discusses situations in which a surrogate is needed but not available to make health care decisions for a patient.

A look at current literature and work by a statewide initiative can motivate development of policies that help respond to unrepresented patients’ needs.