说谎还是不说谎医生的难题.doc

Unit 5 Is it ever proper for a medical doctor to lie to his patient? Should he tell a patient he is dying? These questions seem simple enough, but it is not so simply to give a satisfactory answer to them. To Lie or Not to Lie桾he doctorl’s Dilemma Sissela Bok Should doctors ever lie to benefit their patients ?to speed recovery or to conceal the approach of death? In medicine as in law, government, and other lines of work, the requirements of honesty often seem dwarfed by greater needs; the need to shelter from brutal news or to uphold a promise of secrecy, to expose corruption or to promote the public interest. What should doctor say, for example, to a 46-years-old man coming in for a routine physical checkup just before going on vacation with his family who, though he feels in perfect health, is found to have a form of cancer that will cause him to die within six mouths? Is it best to tell him the truth? If he asks, should the doctors deny that he is ill, or minimize the gravity of the illness? Should they at least conceal the truth until after the family vacation? Doctors confront such choices often and urgently. At times, they see important reason to lie for the patient’s own sake; in their eyes, such lies differ sharply from self-serving ones. Studies show that most doctors sincerely believe that the seriously ill do not want to know the truth about their condition, and that informing them risks destroying their hope, so that the may recover more slowly, or deteriorate faster, perhaps even commit suicide. As one physician wrote: “Ours is a profession which traditionally has been guided by a precept that transcends the virtue of uttering the truth for truth’s sake, and that is as far as possible do no harm.” Armed with such a precept, a number of doctors may slip into deceptive practices that that they assume will “do no harm” and may well help their patients. They may prescribe innumerable placebos, sound more encouraging than the facts warran