Physicians are asked to consider the role patients' emotions play in the healing process.

An ethical case explores what a physician should do when a patient's health insurance will not cover a screening test for cancer despite the fact that a family history puts the patient at increased risk of developing the disease.

An ethical case explores whether it is ethically appropriate for physicians to treat their immediate family members.

Little-known medical trivia.

The journal will feature case studies providing legal and/or ethical opinions to assist students in ethical decision-making and acquaint them with case law. This month's issue explores what a medical student should do about a fellow student's drinking.

The journal will present narrated stories from JAMA's A Piece of My Mind column to illustrate how spoken words reveal much about the relationship between patient and physician. Readers are referred to a story by Danielle Ofri in a 1998 issue of JAMA.

Since its beginning, the AMA Journal of Ethics has grown into a distinct, editorially independent, peer-reviewed publication that illuminates complex questions and ideas often overlooked by traditional ethics curricula.

Readers are referred to an article by J.T. Berger in a 1998 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine and provided with a list of ethical questions to consider about culture and ethnicity in clinical care.

Little-known medical trivia.