To know, or not to know

Dec 12 2006 By Denise Robertson, The Journal

It's not uncommon for me to receive a letter from someone terrified that doctors will tell their loved one they are about to die.

"She wouldn't want to know" or "I don't want him to be left with no hope" they write and I sympathise with them. Useless for me to say talk to the doctors because the answer nowadays is always "we must tell the patient the truth". In the days when I worked in hospital, a doctor was bound to tell either the patient or their next of kin when death was inevitable, depending on his or her judgment of who could best bear bad news. Nowadays doctors tell me they have no option. They are obliged to tell. So why was a man infected with the human form of mad cow disease kept in the dark for three years?

Personally, I'd have chosen to live on, hoping I had something curable, but this man and his family were angry that the truth was kept from them. So are the 65 other patients infected by the same contaminated blood transfusion. Sadly Mark Buckland, 32, has died and his family are campaigning for others who may be being deceived by their doctors. I think Mark did have a right to know but there should be a right not to know as well as a right to know. That's patient choice, something the Government is always banging on about.