BMJ  2003;327:1048-1049 (1 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7422.1048-d

Letter

Survival predictions may hasten death

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—I have always been concerned about predictions of death, a subject discussed by Glare et al.1 While in some cases predictions may be a boon to seriously ill people and their families, in other instances they may hasten death unnecessarily—particularly when given months and years in advance.

Studies show that people can choose, to some degree, the timing of their death, as when there is a particular reason to go on living. For example, people die more often after a major holiday than before.2 In the literature on psychological treatments for cancer, when people find a reason to live, their disease may even arrest or regress.3

On the opposite side, and here is my concern, there is the Musselman phenomenon (noted first in German concentration camps) of giving up and dying within hours.4 By predicting a death, the doctor may, in effect, be "pointing the bone." The literature . . . [Full text of this article]

Daniel J Benor, editor

International Journal of Healing and Caring—On line (www.ijhc.org), PO Box 502, Medford, NJ 08055, USA DB@WholisticHealingResearch.com


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Relevant Article

A systematic review of physicians' survival predictions in terminally ill cancer patients
Paul Glare, Kiran Virik, Mark Jones, Malcolm Hudson, Steffen Eychmuller, John Simes, and Nicholas Christakis
BMJ 2003 327: 195. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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