One of the subjects at my part time job is related to telling the truth.

And a high percentage of the respondents from East Asia (not india) are using as an example the "doctors don't tell a dying patient" story.

The idea that lying to someone about their disease is the only way to help them get better or have calm death bothers me on many levels.

Let's not even get started on the whole murky depths of doctors not being truthful about medicine.

Or how making the decision for somebody about their death is condescending and manipulative and unfair.

I'm just going to say that if I were going to die soon, I would want to know. There's people I'd want to talk to, things I'd want to eat, affairs to put in order.

I don't plan to go blithely ignorant to my death, if its possible, I want to go with full knowledge and full responsibility for my life.

It's such a weird concept (and this is big in Japan, I know because I used to watch Japanese dramas where there was always a brave family gathered around a hospital sick bed all keeping the secret of a fatal diagnosis from the patient and wearing these false, brave smiles, etc) that someone needs to be "protected" from their reality...