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Ruth Lesnewski, MD, MS
New York, NY
rlesnewski@institute2000.org

JAMA. 2006;296:1327-1328.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

I once found myself in a room full of medical students who were busy justifying a lie. It was a hypothetical lie, not a real one, but it alarmed me nevertheless. These 30 students were discussing an imaginary patient: a young man whose physician had given him the wrong injection to treat syphilis. The students were trying to decide what this patient's physician should do. Having determined (with my help) that this particular mistake was unlikely to harm the patient, the students decided that the physician should simply order the correct treatment without revealing his initial error. Standing at the edge of the group with his hand on his hip, a third-year student suggested a plausible (but false) justification for the extra injections required to correct this mistake. Full disclosure would benefit neither physician nor patient, the group believed. In fact, honesty would imperil the patient's . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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