Giving an unfavorable prognostic is one of the most difficult of situations in the relationship between doctors and their patients. This will be taken into account here as a paradigmatic case of ethical issues inherent in this specific professional relationship. We will examine the fluctuating role play and expectations in the doctor-patient relationship, and its unstable status within our professional culture which vacillates between two opposite poles: maintaining the patient’s personal identity and the paradoxical wish of the latter to be taken care of. What does the patient want: a decision-making doctor, often described as paternalistic, or rather a doctor-informant, often thought indifferent and insensitive? The requirement of a communication ethic is situated between these two extremes and through the formal wording that the obligation of informing is.