Abstract

Suffering is a constitutive attribute of human existence. I cannot be a fully-fledged human being if I am not a sentient being. The authors points out a number of important differences between pain and suffering and argues that the modern reductionist biomedical model of disease totally ignores that distinction and treats equally a person in pain and a suffering person. Medicine can control pain but it is not always able, and perhaps it should not always control suffering. It is for the patient to accept and make sense of his suffering. It is a tragic paradox of modern medicine that although death is sometimes the only effective way to eliminate suffering, some doctors aim to do everything to delay death even if this means a dramatic increase of suffering.