The technology of drugs to treat physical pain has progressed and become widely available. Therefore, the number of persons terminally ill with cancer who suffer from physical pain has decreased in recent years. However, there is a fear that the treatment of such pain has become so routine, that the patient who discovers meaning through physical suffering is deprived of that meaning. It seems that the meaning attributed to physical pain by a person terminally ill with cancer differs from that of a patient after an operation. In the latter case, physical pain prevents the consciousness that faces life. On the other hand, in the case of the terminal cancer patient, pain is "the magnetic field" which fixes the consciousness that faces death. This magnetic field may fix that consciousness in such a way that it tends to face to life rather than death. It is said that for terminal cancer patients informed consent concerning pain management is as indispensable as is consent for other medical treatments. Some persons may think that there is no problem in the "routinization" of pain management, because a patient himself is holding the helm in this treatment and is able to control by his own will the physical pain which would act as a magnetic field fixing his consciousness on death, and moreover he is even able to escape the pain. However, if such treatment causes him to mistake his medical situation so as to believe that a terminally ill cancer patient can live comfortably without physical pain, informed consent is unable to be applied to him.
