Do doctors lie to patients?
My girlfriend (who is a urologist), once told me that she knows this one doctor who never tells his patients they have cancer. As in never, ever.
The man — who is a pneumologist — uses a term he has invented himself to name the terrible disease they are suffering from:
“poly-mitosis.”
As in “multiple cell division” (all cancers are forms of abnormal cell growth with the potential to spread to and invade other parts of the body).
When other medical doctors and/or trainees are in the room, he discusses the patient’s case of “poly-mitosis” while the patient has no idea what they are talking about.
I find this very idea gross — or better: perverse.
By not naming the monster, the patients don’t panic and ask less questions, which makes life easier for himself — at least, that’s how I see it.
Needless to say, my girlfriend is militantly against such hypocritical and selfish behavior: a patient has the right to know exactly where he or she is standing, even if the prognosis is very bad.
And I’ll second that poly-heartedly.
SOURCES: Wikimedia commons (Internet Archive Book Images, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons).
