Doctors Once Withheld Cancer Diagnoses

In 1961, 90% of 219 doctors surveyed in Chicago said they usually would not tell patients that they had cancer. It reflected the era's paternalistic medical culture, which gave physicians broad control over how much information patients received. When researchers repeated the questionnaire in 1977, 97% of 264 respondents preferred to disclose the diagnosis, almost completely reversing the earlier result.

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