Dr. Robert M. Arnold is director at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s Institute for Doctor-Patient Communication. Arnold teaches physician leaders how to educate peers to better communicate regarding ethical, psychosocial and existential issues at the end of life.

Dr. Alexandra Cist, board-certified in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine and critical care medicine, is on staff at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she serves on the ethics task force and other ethics committees.

The National Ethics Committee is a subcommittee of the Executive Committee of VHA’s National Leadership Board. It is not a hospital advisory committee in the traditional sense but is an interdisciplinary group from around the nation, charged to issue reports on ethics-related topics, ranging from resource allocation to impaired-consent capacity. It is monitored by the National Center for […]

Sister Carol Taylor is former director of the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University. She also is a senior research scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and a professor of nursing at Georgetown. Her background is in philosophy, bioethics and nursing. She is experienced in caring for chronically and critically ill patients and their families.

The American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics, based in Boston, aims to be a forum for debate, scholarship and critical thought among professionals who work at the intersection of law, health care and ethics. Contact executive director Ted Hutchinson.

Kevin E. Lofton is president and CEO at the Denver-based Catholic Health Initiatives. CHI is operated by a religious-lay partnership. It is one of the largest Catholic health systems firm in the country, with hospitals; long-term care, assisted and independent living and residential facilities; and community-based health organizations in 16 states.

Arthur Caplan is a professor of bioethics and director of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s school of medicine. He co-edited Assisted Suicide: Finding Common Ground.

Tom Mayo is director of the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He has expertise in ethical questions involving Medicare fraud and abuse, organ transplantation, tax-exempt status of health care organizations and, particularly, end-of-life decision-making and advance directives.

Read a Nov. 8, 2011, article from Bloomberg Businessweek about eco-friendly burials and cemeteries.