Only God knows the hour of your death: End‐of‐life care in France

Palliative care often positions itself as an alternative to the hubris of curative medicine, claiming to centre the patient rather than the physician's authoritative knowledge. This article examines that claim through the lens of ‘epistemological modesty’ and the long‐debated question of ‘medical truth telling’, drawing on fieldwork with Parisian oncologists treating West African women with breast cancer and with palliative care practitioners in southern France. It shows that there is considerable variation in how both oncologists and palliative care providers approach dying patients. It argues that, in the context of militant French secularism, both kinds of practitioners tend to fail at epistemological modesty in similar circumstances: when faced with patients whose cultural and religious frameworks differ markedly from their own.