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  3. Should doctors ever lie to benefit their patient — to speed recovery or to conceal the approach of death? In medicine as in law,

Should doctors ever lie to benefit their patient — to speed recovery or to conceal the approach of death? In medicine as in law,

admin2015-01-26  69
问题     Should doctors ever lie to benefit their patient — 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 doctors say, for example, to a 46-year-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 months? 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 reasons 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 patients do not want to know the truth about their condition, and that informing them risks destroying their hope, so that they 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."
    But the illusory nature of the benefits is now coming to be documented. Studies show that, contrary to the belief of many physicians, an overwhelming majority of patients do want to be told the truth, even about grave illness, and feel betrayed when they learn that they have been misled. We are also learning that truthful information, humanely conveyed, helps patients cope with illness: help them tolerate pain better, need less medicine, and even recover faster after surgery.
    There is urgent need to debate this issue openly. Not only in medicine, but in other professions as well, practitioners may find themselves repeatedly in difficulty where serious consequences seem avoidable only through deception. Yet the public has every reason to be wary of professional deception, for such practices are peculiarly likely to become deeply rooted, to spread, and to erode trust. Neither in medicine, nor in law, government, or the social sciences can there be comfort in the old saying, " What you don’t know can’t hurt you."
Which of the following statements is not true?
选项 A、Most of the doctors believe that the seriously ill patients do not want to know the truth about their condition.
B、The truthful information helps patients to deal with their illness.
C、There is a need to discuss whether to lie or not to the patients.
D、It is true that "What you don’t know can’t hurt."
答案D
解析 细节题。源于文章的最后一句话：“Neither in medicine，nor in law，government，or the socialsciences can there be comfort in the old saying，‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you．’”(不管是在医学界，还是在法律界、政府或是社会科学领域，“无知者无畏”)意义与原句正相反，因而是错误的。
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