Sliding "off" the sliding scale: allowing hope, determining capacity, and providing meaning when an illness is becoming worse but a treatment may help.

In this issue of The Journal of Clinical Ethics, Emily Bell and Eric Racine are guest editors of a special section focusing on the use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat Parkinson's disease. In "Deep Brain Stimulation, Ethics, and Society," Bell and Racine report that DBS already has been used to treat more than 50,000 patients. The ethical issues raised in this special section are important not only in regard to Parkinson's disease and DBS, but in many areas of medicine. The articles discuss sound, state-of-the-art ethical approaches. This introduction to the issue presents approaches that are adjunctive and intended to increase careproviders' options, that should increase careproviders' ability to individualize the care that they provide to their patients.