GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Swiss doctors go head-to-head over liberal guidelines for assisted suicide

domingo, 28 de octubre de 2018

BioEdge: Swiss doctors go head-to-head over liberal guidelines for assisted suicide

BioEdge: Swiss doctors go head-to-head over liberal guidelines for assisted suicide

Bioedge

Swiss doctors go head-to-head over liberal guidelines for assisted suicide

by Michael Cook | 28 Oct 2018 |

The Federation of Swiss Medical Doctors (FMH) has refused to include in its code of ethics new guidelines on end-of-life care proposed developed by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS). These provide that a physician may practice assisted suicide for patients presenting with "unbearable suffering" related to the symptoms of an incurable disease or disability. Until now, the patient had to have a terminal illness.

The FMH believes that unbearable suffering is too vague as a criterion. Michel Matter, a FMH vice president, gave the example of a bipolar patient. "When she is in a low phase, such a person would fulfil this condition of unbearable suffering, but not when she is in a high phase." For him, doctors must protect the most vulnerable patients and whose situation is not always clear. "By defending the weakest, the FMH is in step with society," he concluded.

Samia Hurst, of the University of Geneva, who participated in the development of the guidelines, criticised the decision of the FMH. "This test of unbearable suffering is found in many jurisdictions about voluntary death.” She added that "Physicians already practice assisted suicide outside end-of-life situations (for example, by accompanying, for example, elderly people with multiple pathologies). The new directives of the SAMS frame these situations, while the old ones did not. "

Sunday, October 28, 2018

I don’t know whether it is due to reading too much science fiction or not reading enough, but I find it impossible to take the transhumanist movement seriously. Some of its ideas about self-definition have seeped into mainstream culture, like transgenderism. However, its vision of a future in which homo sapiens has evolved into Morlocks and Eloi (as H.G. Wells foresaw in The Time Machine) seems almost preposterous, at least to me.

Perhaps to allay fears that scepticism from people like me will eventually lead to injustice against the more advanced sort of people, American transhumanists have drafted a transhumanist Bill of Rights (see below). This guarantees “sentient entities” everything from universal health care and internet coverage to “self-consciousness in perpetuity”.

One thing that I can never quite grasp about the earnest predictions of transhumanists is whether they actually care whether their schemes are practical. Uploading one’s consciousness to the internet sounds super but the obstacles in its path are more like the Himalayas than parking lot speedbumps – apart from all the ethical issues. Anyhow, good luck to them!