Religious Patients More Likely to Seek Aggressive, Life-Prolonging Care

The results of this study may seem somewhat contradictory, but they do not surprise me in the least.

A new study, to be published tomorrow in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reports that, of terminally ill cancer patients, those who were devoutly religious, were almost three times as likely to seek aggressive, life-prolonging care, and they were less likely to do advance care planning—living wills, DNR orders, appointing health care proxies, etc.

You might at first think that the religious would be ready to go on to the afterlife and therefore more comfortable with death and more prepared for it, but some of the anecdotal evidence I have heard from people in the medical field contradicts that supposition. Also, if you remember back to the Terri Schiavo case, it was self-identified religious groups fighting to keep her on life support.

Sometimes, theses issues overlap in ways that don't necessarily equate with common sense.