GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Is a dementia patient two different people?

domingo, 28 de enero de 2018

BioEdge: Is a dementia patient two different people?

BioEdge: Is a dementia patient two different people?

Bioedge

Is a dementia patient two different people?

by Michael Cook | 27 Jan 2018 | 2 comments

from 'Reflections of the Past', a photo series by Tom Hussey

Canada’s new euthanasia legislation does not permit binding advance directives. However, there is pressure to incorporate them into legislation. Supporters argue that some people choose euthanasia too soon because they fear lingering on in a demented state.

In an acute analysis of the situation in the blog Impact Ethics, Valentina Romano points out that the “legalizing dementia-related advance directives ... is problematic because the justification rests on the assumption that dementia patients are simpler, faded versions of the healthy persons they once were. In reality dementia patients are not abridged versions of their past selves; they are different persons facing new challenges with a different set of interests.”

It is impossible to predict what the wishes of a person with dementia will be, as the disease is “enigmatic and unpredictable”. Romano argues that dementia patients slowly become two different persons as their disease progresses. Therefore “a prospective end-of-life decision made through an advance directive affords too much power to the present person and none at all to the future one.” She concludes:

For a person facing dementia to make a life-ending decision for a future self is more equivalent to that patient making such a decision for a complete stranger. This is, in my mind, the most problematic aspect of advance directives for dementia-related MAiD. By the time they are effective, advance directives for MAiD are to implement wishes that may be utterly irrelevant and completely forgotten by the late-stage demented patient.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

This week’s announcement by Chinese scientists that they had cloned macaque monkeys prompted a walk down memory lane for me. The scientists aver that they have no interest whatsoever in human cloning. One must take them at their word, I suppose, but the impulse to clone humans is a recurring lunacy.

Remember the Raelians? In 2002 Rael, the French-Canadian founder of the sect which believes that mankind was created by extraterrestrials and that cloning is a way to immortality, announced that his scientists had cloned a baby.

Remember Severino Antinori? The Italian gynaecologist announced that he had cloned babies in 2002. No proof was ever given. He is currently battling charges of kidnapping and forcibly removing eight eggs from a Spanish nurse.

Remember Hwang Woo-suk? The veterinary scientist claimed that he had cloned human embryos in 2004 and was featured on a South Korean stamp. Much of his work was fraudulent.

Remember Panayiotis Zavos? The Cypriot-American claimed in 2009 that he had implanted cloned 14 embryos and implanted them in four women. He has faded from the limelight in recent years.

I would wager that if the Chinese experiment is confirmed, there will be another wave of cloning attempts by rogue scientists. Watch this space.