ABSTRACT
There is evidence to show that among physicians in this country the medical paternalist model is a dominant way of conceiving the physician-patient relationship, I contend that the practice of withholding the truth from the patient or his family, a particular form of medical paternalism, is not adequately supported by the arguments advanced to justify it. Beyond the issue of telling patients the truth is the distinction between "ordinary" and "extraordinary" therapeutic measures, a distinction which, I argue, both expresses and helps to perpetuate the dominance of the medical paternalist model.
