Whose Life Is It, Anyway?

Japan and U.S. at opposite poles on patient´s rights.

"Death, Dying and the Biological Revolution.""By the late´70s, there was a debate over whether patients have the right to information, even if the khowledge isn´t good for them.  The conclusion was that the patient had rights, including results that were harmful."  At the same time psychological studies were "beginning to find lots of harm in nondisclosure," says Veatch.        "[Patients experienced] loss of control, anxiety, uncertainty, the frustration of knowing they have a problem but no one telling them what it is."   By 1.979 the Journal of the American Medical Association had published another study on how doctors handle patients with terminal illness.  This time almost all the physicians surveyed said they tended to tell the truth.  To help patients cope with the knowledge, the medical community expanded social-service efforts to educate sufferers about cancer and counsel them during and after the trauma.

Japan is probably still a long way from such a radical turnaround.  But a thin breeze of change is in the air.  The first national conference on patients´rights took place in Tokyo in December 1984, and some Japanese physicians, frustrated at having to decide wich family member to burden with the bad news, now acknowledge the benefits of patients knowing the truth.  Dr. Makoto Kondo, assistant professor in the department of radiology at Keio University Hospital, even thinks that the late emperor should have been told he suffered from cancer.  Patients with intestinal cancer can live for months, says Dr. Kondo.  "If he had been notified, he could have left a death poem, as other emperors have done."

NINA DARNTON with YURIKO  HOSHIAI  in Tokyo.



Clutupuvus,
Claudia Tatiana Palacio Vasco
Administradora de Empresas  -  Especialista en Mercadeo Internacional
TP - 07362  -   de Ministerio de Desarrollo Económico.
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