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There Can Be No Lying in Medicine Essay

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Truthfulness spreads into almost everywhere such as relationships, education, especially medicine because it is a very significant property. Since the beginning, there is an argument in medicine whether doctors should always tell the truth to seriously ill or dying patients or not. There are many various ideas, which may change by situation or people, in this issue. For example, according to Sisella Bok there are three main arguments on this issue, which are that truthfulness is impossible; patients do not want bad news; and truthful information harms them (227) in her article “Lying to the Sick and Dying”. However, while she refers to these arguments she debunks them because she thinks that doctors should not tell lies to their patients. …show more content…

Even if patients cannot understand and make true choices, they have relatives such as family or spouse; hence, doctors can tell the truth to their relatives. Therefore, since doctors can simplify their explanations and patients’ family can make choices for them, doctors should always tell the truth. Lying in medicine seems to be a requirement for doctors because they think that truthful information can hurt patients (Bok 222). According to doctors, while they are telling the truth, patients may have a heart attack or their psychological mechanism might be alleged. Furthermore, death comes more quickly. However, these are so rare and considering these universal is an overgeneralization. In addition, doctors consider their patient as a child and see them like a blind, suffering and passive toy (M.Smith and M.Weil 22); hence, doctors think that they can make choices for their patients without telling the truth to patients. However, this opinion just shows doctors’ paternalistic view (Bok 227). Doctors think that they have the right not to tell the truth to their patients because of their paternalistic view. They point at patients’ misunderstanding of diagnosis because of the esoteric information and patients’ lacking of making best choices due to their illnesses or medicine to support this view. Although these are true, doctors just think for one side and they generalize it. To go into further detail, knowing the truth is a

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