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/lostshell]

Exactly what I thought. Bill for the drugs while pocketing them. The only witness to testify she never got them is going to be dead in a few weeks.

Drug diversion is a straight up euphemism created by the industry to hide what it is. Theft and fraud.

[u/curraheee → u/lostshell]

How about torture as well?

[u/wh4tth3huh → u/curraheee]

The Mother Theresa approach.

[u/recycled_ideas → u/wh4tth3huh]

This is the challenge of moral reasoning.

Mother Theresa believed that life on earth was finite and the afterlife eternal. If you accept those tenets in your morality then virtually any suffering in your life on earth is worth it to ensure happiness in the after life.

We tend to look at her as a monster, but her reasoning isn't really any different than what we use when we authorise medical treatments for our children. Momentary pain for long lasting benefits. Any finite amount of time divided by infinity is effectively zero.

If you change base assumptions about the nature of reality "good" for lack of a better word people will make different decisions under the same circumstances.

[u/searchingformytribe → u/recycled_ideas]

Except she had no problem taking pain meds herself when she was sick.

[u/recycled_ideas → u/searchingformytribe]

Because she was in no danger of not going to heaven.

The point wasn't that pain medication was bad, the point was trying to guarantee that the dying patients get into heaven. If you believe what she believed this is the most important thing she could do for them.

You can disagree with her world view, I do, but the point is that within the scope of what she believed there is no cruelty and no hypocrisy, she's doing her best to ensure the best outcome for her patients. And hypothetically if her belief system was true she made the moral choice.

The larger point I'm making is that we all make moral judgements within the context of our belief system. Not just religious people, but everyone.

[u/Merreinl → u/recycled_ideas]

The faith Teresa adhered to also teaches that those beliefs are not something to be forced upon others. In her concern of being consistent with her own personal code, she oversteps boundaries. She doesn’t and cannot decide who goes to heaven or not, that authority belongs with the almighty, omniscient, omnipresent God she herself believes in. She practices her own religion falsely.

More over, one of the principles in medical care is respecting patient autonomy. Medical practitioners can face a significant number of moral dilemmas, but this is not one of them. This is a dilemma created by her own personal beliefs, and that means it is preventing her from practicing medicine as how it should be done, as it is agreed upon in medical education. That means she is not a good medical practitioner either.

[u/doogles → u/lostshell]

This would be the sort of thing that CMS investigates, but not for long.

[u/GoatCovfefe → u/lostshell]

Correct. Sometimes things are called other things.

[u/pupfight → u/GoatCovfefe]

you've never heard of connotations?

[u/GoatCovfefe → u/pupfight]

I've obviously heard of the formal process of declaring a deceased person a saint in certain Christian churches. 

What does that have to do with anything?