Eutanasia, empatía, compasión y Derechos Humanos / Euthanasia, empathy, compassion and Human Rights

Lo problemático en el estudio de la empatía es su ausencia ante el sufrimiento ajeno. La eutanasia resalta el conflicto moral sobre sufrir o dejar de sufrir frente una enfermedad irreversible y dolorosa. Analizaré el conflicto que presenta el respeto pleno por el principio de dignidad humana, establecido en el artículo 51 del Código Civil y Comercial de la Nación Argentina, en relación con las directivas médicas anticipadas que impliquen una práctica eutanásica que, en función del artículo 60 del mismo cuerpo legal, se deberán tener por no escritas. Dos preguntas cerradas guiarán el análisis: ¿Menoscaba a la dignidad humana la eutanasia, en su modalidad activa? ¿Resulta justa o injusta la restricción a la autonomía personal en relación a la eutanasia? Finalmente, exploraré el rol de la compasión en la eutanasia (AU)

What is problematic in the study of empathy is his absence to the suffering of others. Euthanasia highlights the moral conflict about suffering or stop suffering facing at an irreversible and painful illness. I will analyze the conflict that has full respect of human dignity, laid down in Article 51 of the Civil and Commercial Code of Argentina, in relation to advance medical directives that involve a practice euthanasia, according to the Article 60 of the same legal body, should not be written. Two closed questions will guide this analysis in order to reflect on them: Does euthanasia undermines the human dignity, in its active mode? Is it fair or unfair the restriction of personal autonomy in relation to euthanasia? Finally, I will explore what the role of compassion in euthanasia (AU)

[Bioethics is dead. Long live medical ethics!]. / La Bioética ha Muerto. ¡Viva la Ética Médica!

The purpose of this paper is to show a paradigmatic crisis in academic bioethics. Since an important part of bioethicists began to relativize the ethical prohibition of killing an innocent human being, one way or another they began to ally with the death industry: the business of abortion, and then that of euthanasia. The thesis of this paper is that by crossing that Rubicon bioethics has been corrupted and has lost its connection to the ethical, political and legal discourse. One can only hope that it will revive from its ashes if it retakes the ″taboo″ of the sacredness of human life, something for which medical ethics could provide invaluable help, because it still keeps the notion that ″a doctor should not kill″, although in an excessively ″discreet″ and somehow ″ashamed″ way. However, conscientious doctors know more about ethics than most bioethicists.

Use of role play in undergraduate teaching of ethics - an experience.

Lecture is the traditional way of teaching adopted in our routine. Learning about medical ethics used to be done by lecture. All of us felt that learning some aspects of ethics requires a deeper understanding of the topics especially those areas involving feelings and emotions. So the role play method was chosen. We taught the topics consent and euthanasia by both the didactic method and by role play to the students of second year MBBS during the period June-July 2012 and then we compared the results. We have tried to evaluate role play vis-a vis lecture by analyzing the feedback from the students. The affective component analysis requires a different method of teaching and assessment as shown by our experience.

El médico ante las enfermedades mortales: el caso del cáncer / No disponible

No disponible

Ancient euthanasia: 'good death' and the doctor in the graeco-Roman world.

This article maps the concept of 'good death' (euthanasia) in the ancient world and explores the marginal role of the doctor at a 'good dying'. His assistance was not needed when the Homeric warrior died as a hero and was expected to accept death with resignation. Later the city-state regarded as heroes the men fallen for the cause of the community, honouring these model citizens as those who died well. In the more individualistic age of Hellenism and the Roman Empire, a death in luxury or without suffering could be styled euthanasia. The doctor had neither a place in those acts of dying nor in cases of natural death. He shunned death as a failure of his art. Sometimes a doctor was called in to assist in voluntary death, a role that was not forbidden by the Hippocratic oath. An appeal to this oath by opponents of euthanasia in the modern sense of the word therefore is mistaken.

Why physician-assisted suicide perpetuates the idolatory of medicine.

Adequate response to physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia depends on fundamental philosophical and theological issues, including the character of an appropriate philosophically and theologically anchored anthropology, where the central element of traditional Christian anthropology is that humans are created to worship God. As I will argue, Christian morality and moral epistemology must be nested within and understood through this background Christian anthropology. As a result, I will argue that physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia can only be one-sidedly and inadequately appreciated through rational appeal to central values, such as "human dignity" and "self determination", or through "sola scriptura" biblical interpretation, or individual judgments of conscience. Adequately addressing physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia will depend on a more fundamental spiritual-therapeutic approach. This cluster of moral, epistemological, anthropological, and bioethical claims will be explored by drawing on the texts of St. Basil the Great, St. Maximos the Confessor, and St. Isaac the Syrian. Their reflections on medicine, the human good, and its relationship to worship, spiritual therapy, and God will be used as a basis to indicate a broader philosophical perspective, which will be needed to avoid a one-sided, incomplete approach to the challenges of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. Medical morality, I argue, is best understood within categories that transcend the right, the good, the just, and the virtuous; namely, the holy.

[Selected ethical problems of oncologic patients during the terminal period]. / Wybrane problemy etyczne chorych onkologicznych w okresie terminalnym.

Patient suffering from terminal disease is depended on his environment more than any other one. He often suffers from nervous break down, anxiety and fear and he is usually unprotected from the environment. Fast development of medical science and its technicisation can lead towards dehumanization and lack of psychological and spiritual care, which should be based on clear ethical principles. Main lines of ethical principles of Health Service which are included in Deontological Code of Physicians and Collection of ethical principles for a qualified nurse are the main rules how to proceed as to fulfill the rule: "benefit of a patient is the superior law." According to its speciality Palliative Medicine introduces also four general ethical principles: 1. Patient will is a rule of treatment. 2. The principle of proportion--benefits from the treatment should be higher than losses and suffering from iatrogenic acting. 3. The principle of equality--stop taking a cure does not differ from not undertaking treatment. 4. The principle of relativity--life is not an absolute good, death is not an absolute evil. Holistic acts of Palliative Medicine determines also specific ethical attitudes, especially in the following: 1. Communication between a therapist and a patient and his family (interpersonal attitudes). 2. Procedures how to lessen suffering and its interpretation according to culture, tradition and religion ("nonsense and significance of suffering"). 3. Negation of euthanasia. 4. Spiritual, psychological and social care of patients.