Pascal's wager and the hanging of crepe

Abstract

Hanging of crepe refers to one type of strategy employed by physicians in communicating prognoses to families of critically ill patients. This approach offers the bleakest, most pessimistic prediction of the patient's outcome, presumably in an effort to lessen the family's suffering if the patient dies of his illness. Certain similarities exist between this technic and that used by Pascal, the 17th-century philosopher, in formulating his wager on the belief in God, in that both attempt to develop "no-lose" strategies, in which chances for "winning" are maximized. A detailed analysis of these strategies indicates that neither is truly "no-lose," and that both contain inherent disadvantages. Prognostication, an alternative approach to physician-family communication, appears to be strategically and morally superior to the hanging-of-crepe strategy.