Wide context

Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)

The doctor has to make choice - he or she can either tell the patient that nothing can be done or he or she can be economical with the truth. Telling the truth would probably result in terminally ill patient's breakdown. In the latter situation - namely lying - the doctor enables his or her patient to hold out hope. It may happen that one day science will come up with a medicine that will cure a disease that is incurable at present. Here, one should hesitate to accept lying as it definitely brings more profit than harm.