We missed an article in the Times from last month, where Dalrymple reviewed Being Mortal by Atul Gawande:
Once as a medical student I was deputed by a hospital consultant to tell a family that their loved one was dying of lung cancer. The imparting of such information was not regarded by him as very important, indeed he thought it almost as a distraction from the serious business of curative medicine.
Without any guidance as to how to do it, I told the family in a very straightforward way, not because of any commitment to honesty but because I could think of no other. To my horror, one of the relatives was very hard of hearing…