From the Editors

At a large bioethics conference in the early 1990s, the International Bioethics Institute presented a panel discussion on the newly-hot issue of "medical futility." Erudite experts held forth from various perspectives, with convincing if conflicting arguments. During the question-and-answer session that followed, however, one attendee gently offered the one remark most recalled from that session. He was, if memory serves, a Latino physician working near the Mexico/USA border. "Thank you for your presentations," he said, apparently with great sincerity. "I learned a lot. But on behalf of my own patients, I would ask that before you give them the right to say 'no' to medical treatment, we first give them the option of saying 'yes'." [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]