Telling the truth when truth holds little or no hope is one of the dilemmas in oncology. It is not an easy one. For the uninvolved, either as physician or patient, the answer is quite evident: patients should know what lies ahead of them so that they can make final choices. Out of respect to the individual?s autonomy, we feel obliged to be honest about their fate. Which immediately brings up the embarrassing question: do we always know? Apart from evidently terminal, comatose patients, we base our predictions on experience and statistical averages. Experience can be fallacious, while statistics?. we need not quote Mark Twain.
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