Introduction: One could say that disease and fear of death are the key issues that make most people seek medical help. However, it is striking to find that most of the time devoted to teaching at medical schools focuses on disease while death is simply unspoken. Death as a real and universal fact is a topic rarely discussed in a doctors-to-be classroom. Objective: This essay is intended to make the medical reader aware of the fact that in addition to scientific or empirical criteria, there are other valid and enriching perspectives about agony, death and dying; i.e. the philosophical and theological perspective. To that end, the background is a recently published article in this journal that will be referred to in the next pages. © 2011 Published by Elsevier España.