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The American University of Beirut (AUB) was established in the last decade of the 19th century and is the only one of three current medical programmes in Lebanon to adopt American curricular standards and English as a language of instruction. A formal course in medical ethics was introduced in 1994, which instructs students in the third year on issues such as truth-telling to patients, within the context of the “paternalism versus autonomy” debate.^1–4 Changes of attitude toward cancer disclosure following the introduction of that formal course were measured serially in the same class of AUB medical students as they moved from the first to the fourth medical years. In that four-year interval, students graduated from theoretical courses to clinical contact with patients.

Seventy students …