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

Dr Olivia Kates talks about appropriate use of antibiotics during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

An overview of the duties of expert medical witnesses and general medical witnesses in helping the judicial system gather objective information in cases of injury that may result from medical impairment.

Argument that physicians called upon for expert testimony in court have an ethical duty to educate the jury by offering opinions based upon published, clinically based evidence and peer-reviewed medical literature.

Medical expert witnesses are ethically and legally obligated to provide honest testimony that meets the standards of the Daubert test.

The authors of a recent journal article believe that most doctors and clinical trial sponsors would not object to changes in regulations requiring doctors to disclose financial incentives to their patients.

Protecting patients rather than informed consent should be the goal when the complexity of information overwhelms patients’ decision-making capacity.