La revista Scientific American publica un interesante artículo acerca de varias cuestiones éticas a las que la medicina actual se enfrenta cada día con más frecuencia. Las definiciones de que es la vida y que es la muerte se han complicado debido a los avances de la ciencia.
La inocencia que gozábamos en la niñez de la humanidad ya no es posible recuperarla y ahora que estamos entrando en una etapa de mayor madurez, deberemos dejar atrás las historias y fantasías en las que poníamos nuestra confianza. Ser adultos parecería que es enfrentar la realidad con los ojos bien abiertos y sin estar cobijados por mitos y cuentos que nos hacían sentir seguros o que nos daban respuestas sencillas a problemas complicados.
Roberto Blum
When Does Life Belong to the Living?
With thousands of people on the waiting lists for organs, doctors are bending the rules about when to declare that a donor is dead. Is it ethical to take one life and give it to another?
By Robin Marantz Henig
Death used to be a simple affair: either a person’s heart was beating, or it was not. That clarity faded years ago when heroic medical technology started to keep hearts beating in definitely. Although we have had decades to ponder the distinctions between various states of grave physiological failure, if anything our confusion has grown. When is it ethical to turn off a ventilator or remove a feeding tube? When does “life support” lose its meaning? And most critically, at what point is it acceptable to cut into a body and remove the heart that could save another life?
These issues are not academic. They raise questions about health care costs—is it worth using expensive machinery on a body that is for all intents and purposes dead?—as well as about dignity in end-of-life care. This year’s “death panel” subplot of the health care debate fed off the real fears people have about being taken advantage of when at their weakest.
Scientific American, August 19, 2010
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