Giving Patients False Hope Essay

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Medical Ethics

According to Ruddick, not all forms of giving up hope are rooted in despair. Sometimes allowing a patient to give up hope can be a compassionate response, such as when a terminally-ill patient enters palliative care. There is a distinction between being 'bereft' of hope and simply being without hope. Hope-giving can be seen as a violation of the principle of autonomy and acknowledging the lack of hope can be an important step forward in patients being able to make rational decisions about their health (Ruddick 346). Ruddick also criticizes self-deception, or the idea that the sufferer may delude him or herself into thinking his or her condition is better than it actually is in reality: allowing this does not seem congruent with the principle of autonomy, either.

The McCartney story illustrates an example of when physicians withhold information which they consider 'life-shattering' and would severely inhibit the quality of the individual's limited lifespan.

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Supposedly, Paul McCartney did not fully inform his wife of the extent of her illness so the couple could go on composing music together (Ruddick 348). However, this rationale seems odd: is it not possible that, given the knowledge that she was dying, Linda McCartney would have wanted to compose music even more? Also, what if she did not want to compose music but instead wanted to do other things with her life, given her knowledge that her time on earth was finite? It seems arrogant to make such a decision for the victim of a serious illness, no matter how well-intentioned the concept.

Medical deception is seldom used with a nefarious purpose and is designed to encourage the sufferer to focus on possibilities rather than probabilities, according to Ruddick (Ruddick 349). However, when relatives collude with physicians who engage in false hope-giving, this can create an….....

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