Joseph Collins | Should Doctors Tell the Truth

Joseph Collins | Should Doctors Tell the Truth?
Collins writes from a physician's point of view in 1927 about male, upper-class patients. His stance is paternalistic. He decides what is best for his patients and how much they should know, focusing, on the one hand, on positive consequences of his decisions to lie to patients (they did not despair or commit suicide) and, on the other hand, on negative consequences of his decisions to tell the truth to patients (they did despair or commit suicide) . At times he appears to justify his right to lie to patients on the basis of his superior understanding of their psyches and at others times on the fact that a prognosis is impossible due to the state of current medical knowledge.
-Collins ___________ to tell a patient he had a "different sort of rheumatism," rather than explain mercury and arsenic as the contemporary treatment for syphilis.

A) was forced
B) decided not
C) chose
D) was unable