The doctor's dilemma: Truth telling

Telling Patients the Truth

This article discusses the ethical necessity of health care workers telling their patients the truth about both their diagnosis and prognosis. This necessity is based upon respect for persons, utility, and kindness. Within this ethical obligation to tell the truth, however, there are several different ways in which the truth can be told. In particular, this paper stresses that telling patients ...

Telling the truth.

Are doctors and nurses bound by just the same constraints as everyone else in regard to honesty? What, anyway, does honesty require? Telling no lies? Avoiding intentional deception by whatever means? From a utilitarian standpoint lying would seem to be on the same footing as other forms of intentional deception: yielding the same consequences. But utilitarianism fails to explain the wrongness o...

Telling Lies: The Irrepressible Truth?

Telling a lie takes longer than telling the truth but precisely why remains uncertain. We investigated two processes suggested to increase response times, namely the decision to lie and the construction of a lie response. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were directed or chose whether to lie or tell the truth. A colored square was presented and participants had to name either the true color...

Telling the truth with compassion.

The Value of Truth Telling

Several scholars have suggested that honesty, honor, fairness and other traditional values play a vital role in making capitalism and democracy function (Fukuyama 1995; Zak 2008). Others have recognized that capitalism and democracy reward greed and reinforce antisocial manipulators (Hayes-Roth 2011a). Some believe that enterprises can reconstruct themselves profitably around the principles of ...