Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This article presents the results of empirical research that investigates the citizen's perspectives regarding the issue of death with dignity and the legitimacy of the implementation of measures to accompany this process. Through the implementation and analysis of seven discussion groups, carried out in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile, it can be concluded that there are high levels of consensus among the citizens supporting the need for implementation of external measures to end the life of patients who request it due to suffering related to terminal illnesses, and the need to have legal regulations that supports its application. All of this has been evaluated within the framework of a broad citizen assessment of personal autonomy and from the narration of experiences that reveal the great emotional and monetary burden involved in the process of caring for people with terminal illnesses.

The increase in the incidence and prevalence rate of Chronic Kidney Disease poses challenges and ethical dilemmas that patients, family members and health professionals must face daily. The objective of this article is to present a reflection on the way in which patients make recourse to third parties as participants in their decision-making, which would require an approach based on solidarity autonomy. The analysis of twelve semi-structured interviews conducted with patients 60 years of age and older, from different programs of the Nephrology Unit of the Hospital Universitario San Ignacio in the period 2017-2018 Colombia, is presented. This article proposes the need for family-centered decision making of patients with chronic diseases, before their state is advanced and states of unconsciousness prevent their self-determination, considering the social determination of autonomy.

The reflections recorded in this article consider the way in which the general practitioner can interpret and apply the rule referring to the patient’s right to know the truth based on their assimilation and understanding schemes, closely related to the philosophy implicit in the theoretical model of contemporary medicine. The need is considered that the rule that prescribes the “right of the patient to know the truth” be adapted to the degree of helplessness of each case, in order not to make this right an obligation that contradicts the bioethical principle of responsibility that it indicates the personalistic bioethical current. Reference is made to “doctor’s phobia” -iatrophobia- as an expression of specific psychic damage resulting from inappropriate application of “truthfulness.” In order to a practice that has ceased to be “assistance” (derived from the Latin “assistere”: to be next to) to become strictly therapeutic, reference is made to the challenge of coping outside the iron positivist matrices in which the medical model is installed, pointing out the obstacles that the Bioethics Committees must surely overcome when it comes to urging responsible compliance with the truth rule.

The coronavirus health-emergency shows that liability schemes need to discriminate the conceptual instruments available to address a new disease that, additionally, has become a pandemic. This article argues that, regarding new diseases, a fault-based liability schemes prevents health providers from being held liable for consequences that could not have been foreseen or avoided according to the state of knowledge of science. Besides, regarding the public health problem, any liability judgment must take into account changes to the medical lex artis; distinguishing also the eventual liability of health providers from the one that belongs to the authority in charge of the response to the pandemic.

This study aimed to develop a scale to ethically evaluate the privacy of the body in gynecology and obstetrics. It was carried out in a university research and application hospital and in a private hospital in Turkey. A stratified sample was adopted with a total of 2,159 participants, including physicians, nurses, and midwives, OB/GYN patients, surgical patients, internal medicine patients, and healthy individuals. The Lawshe method was used. The results showed that physical space is important in protecting privacy; the participants perceived privacy as a right; women, married people, primary school graduates, older people and those closest to rural culture are more sensitive to privacy than others; Among healthcare providers, physicians are more privacy conscious than nurses and midwives; no participant had in-depth knowledge of patient rights and relevant legislation. The body privacy scale in gynecology and obstetrics proved to be a valid and reliable scale. With it, the privacy of the body in obstetrics and gynecology can be evaluated in future research, as well as the perceptions of body privacy of those who receive and provide medical care. By applying this scale, the privacy of gynecological and obstetric patients can be protected and the results reflected in clinical practice. This scale can also be used in education and in improving ethical sensitivity in physicians.

Social implementation of post-humanism could affect the biological evolution of living beings and especially that of humans. This paper addresses the issue from the biological and anthropological-philosophical perspectives. From the biological perspective, reference is made first to the evolution of hominids until the emergence of Homo sapiens, and secondly, to the theories of evolution with special reference to their scientific foundation and the theory of extended heredity. In the anthropological-philosophical part, the paradigm is presented according to which human consciousness, in its emancipatory zeal against biological nature, must “appropriate” the roots of its physis to transcend the human and move towards a more “perfect” entity; we also assess the theory that refers this will to the awakening of the cosmic consciousness in our conscious matter. Finally, it assesses whether this post-humanist emancipatory paradigm implies true evolution or, instead, an involution to the primitive state of nature.

This article aims to make clear that the Chilean regulation of the right to be informed and informed consent in Dentistry is not sufficient for the proper exercise of such rights. To do this, it begins by describing this obligations, considering historical and doctrinal aspects. It continues to analyze the right to be informed and informed consent, emphasizing its purpose and usefulness. Subsequently, the current Chilean regulation on the matter is critically detailed, to finish exposing aspects of dental practice in the field of informed consent. Lastly, some solution proposals for overcoming the problems found are indicated.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss one of the most common ethical predicaments faced by public health practitioners: the distribution of limited resources for health. The question we address is the following: If there are limited resources to provide necessary health care, how can we reasonably establish priorities? We discuss this question using as reference a real-life situation, which was the establishment of priorities in the design of a package of high-cost interventions for Seguro Popular in Mexico, a public insurance scheme that extended social protection in health to over 50 million people between 2003 and 2018. The main conclusion of this paper is that the use of explicit ethical assumptions in the design of public policies contribute to their acceptability and eventual success.

After discussing the scope and implications of the expression “mental health” at both the individual and social levels, this paper emphasizes that suffering (a pathic condition) is not always pathological in medical terms, and should be taken into consideration when evaluating the responses to the syndemic (the synergistic outcome of many alterations of the social milieu) caused by Covid19. Against the background of the historical-anthropological dimensions of experience and expectation of societies, the dialogical underpinning of bioethical thinking is rephrased as a psychoethics that incorporates an evaluation of the responses affecting the public, the communicators, and authorities. This reinforces the need for an empirical situationism in moral deliberation and the demand for empirical axiology in which judgments are made after continuous contrasting values, principles, and norms with the actual behavior of people.