Bioethics Forum - Choosing Paternalism?

Note: 2007

"....The article described the case of a 39-year-old patient with ovarian cancer that had metastasized to her liver. She was asked to decide whether to undergo a novel chemotherapy regimen about which five oncologists disagreed. When she asked her doctor what she should do he said he didn’t know, that she would have to make the decision based on her own values. The patient, “bald, tumor-ridden and exhausted from chemotherapy was reeling. ‘I’m not a doctor!’ she shouted, ‘I’m a criminal defense lawyer! How am I supposed to know?’” The story illustrates the frustration, anxiety, and loneliness of being a “modern patient” attempting to cope with medical uncertainty."