When medical science is known to work on a cure, patients sometimes have a greater false sense of hope than they can bear. They feel frustrated, but science feels that the frustration is acceptable because they are working on a solution. A patient may wait for an entire lifetime for the cure - that may come too late to be of any help.

Is it beneficial to withhold information that science is working on a solution? Is it true that what the patient does not know will not hurt him?

After all, a patient who has no false sense of being able to resolve issues may learn to accept his disability, and possibly work towards compensating for it. If science does find a solution then he can be pleasantly surprised, and then relieved of the situation.

Even in these circumstances, problems may arise if science finds only a partial solution to the problem. The patient may be more frustrated in this case. He was given hope of improvement, so he views the situation differently. Since there is an improvement, he is no longer in a rut. He now wants to have a complete improvement.

Science has to determine whether it is worth telling people about the potential for a partial cure for their disability.

This adds to the fact that under the best of circumstances, science may not find a cure to every situation, and that there is a risk a problem would be exacerbated by their intervention.

These issues must be considered so that clients will not be more frustrated than before.