Pact of silence and right to information in seriously ill patients. Writing the last chapter of life

Abstract

Today no one doubts, at least in Western countries, that the holder of the right to clinical information is the patient whose health as has been institutionally recognized in several laws and international instruments. However, it is still possible to observe certain practices that go against this common assumption; particularly those that, with a paternalistic bias, omit the ob-ligation to provide adequate information to the patient who has been diagnosed with a serious illness with a limited life prognosis. Although the reasons usually invoked to justify this reti-cence are varied, it can be affirmed that, in the end, they all concur with the objective that the patient should not lose hope of recovering his or her health. The aim of this paper is to show that this objective deprives the patient of the opportunity to write meaningfully the last chap-ter of his or her life and to find the strength of a fresh and truly free hope, thus causing a greater harm than the one it is intended to prevent.