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阅读理解
Should doctors ever lie to benefit their patient－to speed recovery or to cover the coming of death?In medicine as in law, government, and other lines of work, the requirements of honesty often seem dwarfed(变矮小)by greater needs：the need to protect from brutal news or to uphold a promise of secrecy; to advance the public interest．
What should doctors say, for example, to a 46-year-old man coming in for a routine physical check up just before going on vacation with his family who, though he feels in perfect health, is found to have a form of cancer that will cause him to die within six months．Is it best to tell him the truth?If he asks, should the doctor reject that he is ill, or minimize the gravity of the illness?Should they at least hide the truth until after the family vacation?
Doctors face such choices often．At times, they see important reasons to lie for the patient's own sake; in their eyes, such lies differ sharply from self-serving ones．
Studies show that most doctors sincerely believe that the seriously ill patients do not want to know the truth about their condition, and that informing them risks destroying their hope, so that they may recover more slowly, or deteriorate(恶化)faster, perhaps even commit suicide．
But other studies show that, contrary to the belief of many physicians; a great majority of patients do want to be told the truth, even about serious illness, and feel cheated when they learn that they have been misled．We are also learning that truthful information, humanly conveyed, helps patients cope this illness：help them tolerate pain better, need less medicine, and even recover faster after operation．
There is urgent need to debate this issue openly．Not only in medicine, but in other professions as well, practitioners may find themselves repeatedly in difficulty where serious consequences seem avoidable only through deception(欺骗)．Yet the public has every reason to know professional deception, for such practices are peculiarly likely to become deeply rooted, to spread, and to trust．Neither in medicine, nor in law, government, or the social sciences can there be comfort in the old saying,“What you don't know can't hurt you．”
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