Surname 3
prescription is more likely to work when the patient has faith in the doctor (the placebo effect),
and this is often dependent on the level of sincerity of the physician to the patient. This is a
visible indication of how truth plays a crucial role in medicine.
The truth can be compromised in many different ways. When the relationship between
the doctor and the patient is short-term, where the decisions to be made are in a compressed
period, there is usually less opportunity to worry about how the truth impacts the patient.
However, when the relationship is long-term, there is much likelihood of withholding the truth
temporarily, for compassionate reasons. This is mainly seen in relationships such as that between
a psychiatric patient and a doctor. Such relationships have stronger bonds, and the treatment
therapy is more of treating the illness rather than the disease. In my stance, I deem the truth to be
essential but conditional, such that it will be applicable in some conditions and be withheld in
other exceptional circumstances.
Cultural relativity and patient autonomy
The primary focus of Macklin’s investigation was to investigate the moral dilemma that
exists between the patients and the physicians, based on their cultural diversities and differences.
He deems cultural pluralism as a factor that poses a severe threat to the healthcare sector,
especially to the multicultural states like the United States. Such states are characterized by visits
to the hospitals by people from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. Despite Macklin
describing the whole model of multiculturalism to be a factor that embraces the act of ethical
relativism, it is in real life, not logically consistent with relativism (Macklin, 20).
In his argument, he does not only think that all the cultural, religious and ethical beliefs
should be treated equally but also adds to the fact that they should just be treated equally in light
