When patients are unable to express their wishes and do not have surrogates or advance directives, which and whose values should inform decision making for them? We discuss ethical complexities of caring for unrepresented patients.

Drs Katrina Bramstedt and Ana Iltis discuss the development of QoL assessment tools to help patient-subjects considering reconstructive transplantation.

AMA Journal of Ethics theme editor Karel-Bart Celie, a second-year medical student at Columbia University School of Medicine, interviewed Joseph J. Fins, MD, about the work of ethics committees and consultants as they pursue professionalization and respond to changes in health care organization and practice.

Medically futile/inappropriate treatments and rationing have distinct ethical justifications and applications and require separate policies.

The experience of an English professor dying of ovarian cancer in Margaret Edson’s play Wit shows that both literary and medical discourse obfuscate and objectify rather than promote communication of “simple human truths” that dignify life and death.

Physicians’ ethical obligations to disclose conflicts of interest to patients and to obtain their informed consent for treatment are particularly critical when proposed treatments are experimental.

How to resolve conflicts between hospital policy and the treatment recommendations for an individual patient.

How to resolve conflicts between hospital policy and the treatment recommendations for an individual patient.

Strategies for improving health care ethics consultation should appeal to key stakeholders in hospitals and not just the academic bioethics community.