The poll, by Japan's national Asahi newspaper, showed an increase of 17 percentage points from the last survey in 1989 in the portion of Japanese who want to be told about their illness. Japanese doctors have traditionally kept cancer patients in the dark about their sickness on the assumption that knowing death was imminent would only deepen the sufferer's misery. That practice, however, is on the decline as treatment improves and cancer is no longer seen as an automatic death sentence, and as more patients demand information about their health.
Cancer is Japan's leading cause of death.
The practice of not telling sufferers about their cancer is part of a wider tendency among doctors in Japan to keep medical information from patients. Doctors often refuse to tell pregnant women the gender of their fetuses, and routinely dispense medicine without telling patients what they are taking. The Asahi ran an editorial on October 23 calling for greater adherence to informed consent between doctors and patients, particularly when data taken from patients are also being used for research. This information is provided for educational purposes only. Please read the disclaimer .