But is it fear or faith that makes them do it? A new study from The Journal of the American Medical Association does not go into the motivations, but its findings are drawing notice:

As The Times account has it:

Terminally ill cancer patients who drew comfort from religion were far more likely to seek aggressive, life-prolonging care in the week before they died than were less religious patients and far more likely to want doctors to do everything possible to keep them alive, a study has found.

The patients who were devout were three times as likely as less religious ones to be put on a mechanical ventilator to maintain breathing during the last week of life, and they were less likely to do any advance care planning, like signing a do-not-resuscitate order, preparing a living will or creating a health care proxy, the analysis found.

Why this apparently counterintitutive outcome? The Reuters story asked one expert:

The Rev. Percy McCray, director of pastoral care and social services for the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, said people of faith and their families “tend to want to extend their treatment and care as long as possible because often they are attempting to give God opportunity to perform a miracle.”

“I have personally seen patients who were given bleak and grim prognoses surpass and survive such outlooks to live many months and years,” he told Reuters in an e-mail.

“The down side can be the mental, emotional, and possible financial drain and anxiety that can build in a prolonged hospital stay,” he said.

Perhaps it is also important to understand that believers are not fatalists. Here is one of the study’s authors in The Times piece:

“People think that spiritual patients are more likely to say their lives are in God’s hands — ‘Let what happens happen’ — but in fact we know they want more aggressive care,” said Holly G. Prigerson, the study’s senior author and director of the Center for Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care Research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

“To religious people, life is sacred and sanctified,” Dr. Prigerson said, “and there’s a sense they feel it’s their duty and obligation to stay alive as long as possible.”

The disturbing element to me is the lack of advance preparation by believers, in terms of living wills and such. These instruments can do so much to help loved ones and offer sound guidance to families and medical professionals.

See a more detailed write-up in Science Daily.