Bioethics Director Robert Klitzman on the Spiritual Needs of Cancer Patients

On Medscape Medical News, Bioethics program director Robert Klitzman commented on the spiritual needs of cancer patients.

He noted that the lack of holistic care emerged in the late-19th century: "American medicine wanted to become very scientific and distanced itself from what it saw as quackery. They rejected anything that wasn't scientific."

However, he noted, "Someone experiencing cancer and possibly facing the end of life doesn't think of science as one thing and spiritual issues as something else — they are seen as one and the same."