The Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi answered a question about a doctor’s recommendation to a patient to avoid fasting.
Question: In some illnesses like kidney failure, the patient can be recommended not to fast with certainty. But in many cases that there are doubts about the main illness, or how fasting affects them, or due to non-existence of research and necessary results about the effects of fasting on many illnesses, and generally because the role of fasting on the illness is unknown, the doctor really does not know whether to recommend fasting to the patient or not; in this case, what is the duty of the doctor?
The Grand Ayatollah Makarem: There are two sides to this question: Sometimes the fear of harm is clear, meaning the significant possibility of harm of fasting is clear to the doctor. Here, the doctor can communicate the situation to the patient, and if the patient learns about the fear of fasting from the doctor’s saying, (then) quits fasting. In the second case where there is a low probability, the patient cannot be recommended to quit fasting.
Source: PERSIAN SHAFAQNA
