Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature - School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio
DZRB 738KHz AM 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday
Paolo drew one, last deep breath and held it there as if forever. His eyes were
Living with Nature - School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio
DZRB 738KHz AM 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday
Paolo drew one, last deep breath and held it there as if forever. His eyes were
wide
open, glassy and welled with tears. His pale lips went agape as his whole body
tensed. That was the arrival of the inevitable moment when he gave up fighting
for life.
Immediately,
doctors, working with quick hands put the boy’s body under the command of
modern machines like: a high voltage cardiac resuscitator; a lung machine that
works on the principle of our diaphragm; and electronic gadgets to monitor
pulse rate, body temperature and blood pressure. The sight of wires and tubes
all over the young patient, with doctors working double time, reminds one of
the desperate, but futile, effort to save the mortally wounded President of the
United States, John F. Kennedy, in a Dallas hospital on November 22, 1963.
This
situation also reminds one of the celebrated Karen Quinlan case. This is about
a young woman, who remained in a state of coma at a US hospital for more than a
year. Since her condition was not improving, she was unplugged from
her life-sustaining machines. The case became an issue of a long court
battle. In the end, the patient was allowed to die, unplugged from
her machines.
The
court’s decision leaned heavily on the principles of bioethics. These
principles continue to influence similar cases today, some 30 years later.
Bioethics, the ethics of the life sciences, offers guidelines for dealing with
life-and-death decisions. The ethical principles involved are expressions of
values, and the humane foundations of moral values.
In
both the cases of Paolo and Karen, we ask? What is clinical death? Is the prolongation of life with machines (despite
certification of a hopeless condition), justifiable? In short, is
keeping people alive through artificial means ethical?
By
analyzing the interrelationships of ethical principles, we conclude that the
human being must be respected. Allow him to die peacefully and let the bereaved
family realize God’s sovereignty over life and all creation.
Bioethics
and Social Justice
Outside
the hospital, people needing immediate treatment, are waiting for their
turn. There are those, mostly poor, who have been waiting silently
in prolonged agony. In remote towns and villages, it is considered a luxury to
have a doctor around. The medical care most poor people know are unreliable,
often associated with superstitious beliefs. What an extreme scenario from that
of Paolo and Karen!
Thus
bioethics and social justice must go hand in hand as we view its application
upon the millions of poor people who are dying without benefit of good
medicine. Like in war, precious medicine is applied on the potentially
salvageable, and denied for those who are dead or beyond help.
Yet
there are those who feel privileged with “over treatment”. This is why we
question the morality of cryogenics (dealing with the effects of very low
temperatures), its lavishness and futuristic goals. There are over a
hundred rich people in America today whose bodies lie in cryogenic tanks,
awaiting the day when medicine shall have found a way to revive them.
------------------------------------------------------
“In
the real sense, the practice of virtue is what morality is all about,
meaning lived morality, the
morality that leads to self-realization and ultimately,
happiness. After all, virtue is the road to happiness.”
Fr.
Fausto Gomez, OP, STD, Relevant Principles in Bioethics
-------------------------------------------------------
Here
is another example of social injustice. The US spends US$1.5 billion daily on
healthcare, even as more than a quarter of its population are deprived of
medical benefit. One can imagine the tremendous contribution to world peace and
improvement in the quality of human life, if only a portion of this wealth and
that used for resurrecting life is diverted to the plight of the world’s poor.
Bioethics
and Disease Prevention
Dr.
Mita Pardo de Tavera is a doctor who believes in the primary health care
approach of involving people’s full participation. She raised ethics
of appropriability disease prevention as superior to its cure. This
approach should be part of a program to eradicate diseases such as
tuberculosis. The solution is not to be dependent merely on medical approaches,
but on sound socio-economic programs as well that deal with illiteracy and
unemployment.
Pillars
of Bioethics
The
broad domain of bioethics rests on four pillars, as follows:
§ Truth
§ Compassion
§ Beneficence
§ Justice
Goodness
springs from every righteous person when dealing with questions on
bioethics. It is conscience, that inner voice which makes us
conscious of guilt.
But
how good is good enough? To answer this question, we have to qualify
conscience as formative conscience. Fr.
Tamerlane Lana OP STD, rector of the University of Santo Tomas, emphasizes that
the formation of conscience is a life-long task, especially for professionals
whose decisions directly affect the lives of people. The goal is for them to
attain a well-informed conscience, which is upright and truthful, and that does
not rely merely on acquired knowledge. It has to be a conscience guided by the
spiritual nature of man.
Growing
Application of Bioethics
Today,
with man’s growing affluence we find bioethics as part of the expanding fields
of science and technology, areas that have direct consequences affecting human
life. Thus, we hear people raising questions of morality and ethics
in various areas such as:
§ Euthanasia.
§ Hospice
management.
§ Organ
transplantation and rehabilitation.
§ Contraception,
abortion and sterilization.
§ Social
justice in the allocation of healthcare resources.
§ The Human
Genome Project (HGP), and genome mapping.
§ Genetic
engineering and human cloning.
§ In vitro fertilization
(test tube babies).
§ Surrogate
motherhood.
§ Menopausal
childbirth technology.
§ Induced
multiple births.
§ Aging and
extension of longevity.
§ Pollution
and global warming.
§ Ecosystems
destruction.
§ Thermonuclear,
biological and chemical warfare.
These
areas of concern in bioethics are expanded into medical ethics for doctors,
lawyers and scientists to know. These include the following cases:
1. Food Additives and Contamination.
Vital
issues of discussion are the manufacture and distribution of food laced with
harmful substances like potassium bromide in bread, sulfite in
white sugar, nitrate in meat, glacial acetic acid in
vinegar, monosodium glutamate (MSG) in cooked food, and aspartame in
softdrinks. Many of these substances are linked to cancer, diabetes
and loss of memory.
2. Ecological Bioethics.
“Is
it a sin to cut a tree?” a student asked this author.
This
is a bioethical question. It is not the cutting of the tree, per se, that
causes the “sin”. Rather, it is the destruction of the ecosystem, the
disruption of the functioning of natural laws resulting from the tree cutting,
that is considered unethical.
The
unabated logging of the watersheds of the once beautiful city by the sea –
Ormoc City in Southern Leyte - caused massive mudflows sweeping the
central part of the community and killing hundreds of residents. Yet the ethics
and morality of the actions of the loggers were never questioned.
In
the realm of theological sciences, this tragedy is akin to the paradigm of
salvation. According of Fr. Percy Bacani CICM, it is a sin to harm
the environment, because it causes people to suffer. To find salvation, the
culprits of the Ormoc tragedy should plow back their ill-gotten wealth for
rebuilding the community they destroyed. The morality of this paradigm touches
deep down at the roots of moral philosophy.
Five
Principle in Bioethics
Basic
questions are raised where bioethics
and moral philosophy are involved. These questions may be
categorized under five general types.
§ When are we
responsible for the consequences of our actions? (Principle of indirect
voluntary).
§ How far may
we participate in the performance of evil actions done by others? (Principle of
cooperation).
§ When may we
ethically perform an action from which results in two effects, good and evil?
(Principle of double effect).
§ Are we the
lords of our lives and all creation, or only custodians thereof? (Principle of
stewardship).
§ Is the good
of a part subordinated to the good of the whole? (Principle of totality).
These
general ethical principles serve as guides in analyzing situations, making
decisions, or forecasting the consequences of one’s actions. These principles
are used in law, philosophy, theology, management and other disciplines.
The values on which
they are founded which, in turn, provide the virtues that guide our actions, remain unchanged.
Why
do we not always follow the dictates of our conscience? “It is because we are
weak, or blinded by sin or vice. Or because we lack virtue and fortitude,” says
Fr. Fausto Gomez OP, regent and professor of bioethics at the UST College of
Medicine.
Man
has yet to learn to avoid evil, and to do good. Temptation leads one
to sin, but so does complacency and inaction.
On that fateful day, Paolo my hero, was the focus of a most crucial decision the doctors, my family and I had to make. When we made it, the life-sustaining machines were finally removed that day in 1983. Paolo died in my arms. He was my son. ~
On that fateful day, Paolo my hero, was the focus of a most crucial decision the doctors, my family and I had to make. When we made it, the life-sustaining machines were finally removed that day in 1983. Paolo died in my arms. He was my son. ~
Paolo
Young fronds of coconut are offered on Palm Sunday. Thousands of coconut seedlings and trees are sacrificed, leading to the death of thousands of trees on a single occasion every year. Estimated loss runs to millions of pesos. The productive life of a coconut may extend to fifty years. The value of nuts and other products (tuba, midrib, husk, leaves, firewood, charcoal) produced by a single tree in a year is between P1000 to P5000. The same occasion endangers other species such as buri, anahaw, and oliva or cycad which are living fossils, and are now endangered species.
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