@article{84d508d128d746d5ae0d40324afcfbaa,
title = "Handle with Care: Rethinking the Rights versus Culture Dichotomy in Cancer Disclosure in India",
abstract = "Medical practitioners, bioethicists, psychologists, and anthropologists have debated whether it is ethical to disclose or withhold information from patients about cancer diagnoses. This debate is framed as pitting universal individual human rights against cultural pluralism. The rights-based argument asserts that people have a right to information about their own health to make the best decisions about their treatment. The cultural variation argument suggests that in some cultural contexts there is a perception that information about one's cancer diagnosis may cause more harm than good due to the psychological trauma this may cause. Based on ethnographic research with cancer patients in India, I argue that both sides of this debate overemphasize the importance of the content of the information that may be disclosed or withheld and underestimate the central ways in which the act of disclosing or withholding information is evaluated as a symbol of care of paramount concern to patients.",
keywords = "India, cancer, care, disclosure, ethics",
author = "{Van Hollen}, {Cecilia Coale}",
note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgments. Research for this article was supported by an American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Senior Short Term Research Fellowship and by the Maxwell School for Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. I am also grateful for my affiliations with the Department of Humanities and Social Science at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, the Rural Women{\textquoteright}s Social Education Centre (RUWSEC) in Thiruvanmayur, and the Adyar Cancer Institute in Chennai, and for permission granted for my research by the director of the Arignar Anna Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Institute in Kanchipuram. I am also greatly indebted to my research assistants, Shweta Krishnan and Shibani Rathnam. And I would like to thank Jocelyn Killmer, Laurah Klepinger, Lalit Narayan, and the editor and anonymous reviewers of Medical Anthropology Quarterly for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017 by the American Anthropological Association",
year = "2018",
month = mar,
doi = "10.1111/maq.12406",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "32",
pages = "59--84",
journal = "Medical Anthropology Quarterly",
issn = "0745-5194",
publisher = "Wiley-Blackwell",
number = "1",
}