Study finds many doctors disregard wishes of cancer patients. Frequently, patients with advanced cancer simply want to be made as comfortable as possible as they wind down their final days. Many of these patients are receiving treatment focused on extending their lives rather than easing their pain.

[u/mvea]

https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2025/08/26/cancer-patients-treatment-wishes-study/7921756217134/

[u/jestina123]

Mother Teresa

[u/Protean_Protein → u/jestina123]

Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu the Albanian, withholding comfort and care because “saving souls” is what really matters. Horrible person literally canonized by a sick death cult.

[u/HughJorgens → u/Protean_Protein]

Yep her famous 'Hospital' was just a place for people to suffer then die. They weren't trying to cure anybody. And didn't her Nobel Prize money get kept and not used there? Edit: It was basically a painful Hospice. They did provide basic medical care like bandages and cleaning bedpans and stuff, they just made no attempt to get anybody better. Somebody Dm'd me then deleted the comment or something and said that the money thing was false. They sent a link to a r/badhistory thread. It says basically that the accusations are unproven. So a better level of believability than the accuser, but still not settled completely.

[u/Protean_Protein → u/HughJorgens]

Malcolm Muggeridge was one of the main concocters of the mythos around her, and a billion Catholics ate up the idea that she was “helping the poor in India”—presumably most of them innocently believed that that meant giving them access to proper medical care. But all it was was proselytizing and glorying in suffering.

[u/notyourstranger → u/[deleted]]

How did she comfort them? Did she ensure they had pain medicine? Did she advocate for palliative care? Or did she pray for them and speak words of comfort during a time when it was possible to provide actual physical comfort?

Imagine somebody is dying from cancer. It's painful to breathe for them. Medicine exists to reduce their suffering. Giving them that medicine is the moral action. NOT giving them medicine is immoral.

Pretending that praying is an appropriate action is virtue signaling and immoral.

I'm asking cause I don't know the history and I'd rather not mess up my feed by doing a search on her.

[u/Protean_Protein → u/[deleted]]

She didn’t think she was a sadist, but her treatment of the poor and sick was worse than it otherwise might have been had she not had the religious convictions that she professed to have (despite a “dark night of the soul”).

[u/just_a_wolf → u/Protean_Protein]

This just isn't true. I don't know why people have such a hate on for Mother Theresa, I'm sure some of her religious beliefs were pretty intense, but all the stuff about her letting people suffer without pain medicine because of her religious beliefs is BS. Pain meds were regulated in India at the time and were not available to them.

[u/Protean_Protein → u/just_a_wolf]

Not just her but the entire organization.

[u/notyourstranger → u/just_a_wolf]

I want to learn more. I've heard her accused of "kidnapping children" but to me it read more like she tried to give these children better lives by getting them new parents. I know little about India's history and I honestly can't tell if she's being demonized (if so by whom and for what reason?) or if she did the best any human could under the circumstances.

[u/Protean_Protein → u/notyourstranger]

The criticism is that if her organization had not been ideologically Christian of the sort that it was, then more could have been done. Her focus on “soul saving” and some other issues with how the ill were handled is the criticism. It’s not just a demonization campaign, but a sober reckoning that came during the Church’s beatification and canonization process.

Plus, like, people have been afraid to speak frankly about her, especially after she was made a saint.

[u/PatchyWhiskers → u/Protean_Protein]

While her methods certainly can draw criticism to say the least, why exactly are you drawing attention to her nationality and foreign birth name? Little bit odd…

[u/Protean_Protein → u/PatchyWhiskers]

Because I reject her sainthood and her use of Catholicism as a means to pretend to be helping people.

[u/PatchyWhiskers → u/Protean_Protein]

So don't make it seem like your problem is her being Albanian then.

[u/GrossGuroGirl → u/jestina123]

Excellent example, and exactly my point - I'd hope she was an extreme outlier, and not that a meaningful segment of the people working in end-of-life care are just... like that. 

[u/just_a_wolf → u/GrossGuroGirl]

Claims against Mother Theresa are not substantiated. https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/s/fIIKbUiNJG

[u/2C104 → u/jestina123]

You are spreading discord and slander about a woman who stood up for the poor who everyone else had abandoned.

Shame on you. You sit from the comfort of your screen and judge a person who was willing to go to the dredges of society where people were literally thrown into the filth of the gutters of the street and carry them back to be cleaned and cared for, shown compassion and love in their final moments on earth. What have you done?

Mother Teresa gave the poorest of the poor love and dignity when no one else would.

She gave what she had, providing basic care where otherwise nothing would have been provided. She treated people as individuals deserving of dignity and respect when the rest of society treated them like animals.

The Missionaries of Charity were never intended to be medical facilities like hospitals, they were a substitute for basic needs when the individuals being ignored would die like dogs in the street.

There are a tremendous amount of personal testimonies from the poor themselves to testify to the fact that they were loved in their final moments - not just Catholics, but people of every faith - Hindus, Muslims, etc.