11.   By the time his tenure at the hospice ended, Quill said, he viewed the care of dying patients as an essential part of his practice.

12.   Can dying patients give informed consent?

13.   Choice in Dying has taken no position on assisted suicide, Kaplan said, but intends to submit information to the Supreme Court on the care of dying patients.

14.   Dr. Ned J. Cassem, a Massachusetts General Hospital psychiatrist who opposes physician-assisted suicide, said many dying patients who think of suicide are depressed.

15.   Dying patients given LSD have reported less pain and less fear, he said.

16.   Doctors had the hardest time predicting the life spans of dying patients with congestive heart failure, the most common cause of death in the United States.

17.   Dying patients were shunned and abused.

18.   Families are encouraged to be with the dying patient and even spend the night.

19.   He also held hands with dying patients who could not hold on long enough for a donor organ to become available.

20.   He says a dying patient might remind him of someone he lost in his own family or even evoke his own final days to come.