And they can easily drop hospice care and return to curative treatment whenever they want.

FORBES: Learning the Right Lessons from Hospice

For these patients, the traditional hospice rules applied in order to qualify for home hospice, they had to give up attempts at curative treatment.

NEWYORKER: Letting Go

They also discovered that only two hospitals in the country gave CT scans to patients being considered for curative treatment within the recommended time of two weeks.

BBC: Cat scan

They knew that only a small percentage of the terminally ill ever halted efforts at curative treatment and enrolled in hospice, and that, when they did, it was usually not until the very end.

NEWYORKER: Letting Go

"This new treatment is likely to be better, although current treatments are not curative, and it is unlikely that orexin would be curative, " he told BBC News Online.

BBC: NEWS | Health | Brain chemical helps narcolepsy