1999
Àngel Puyol González, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Politics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Who should we allow to die? This is the kind of decision which today's welfare state in crisis must confront. The days when medical technology was economically accessible to attend to all those who needed it has given way to a new context of growing financial difficulties in the provision of public services. The result is the need to ration scarce health resources.
It is vital to build consensus on a topic such as this. In the context of enforced budget restrictions, some people will die while the health of others will be seriously compromised. As a consequence, all members of society have the right, and also the obligation, to form part of the process that creates and distributes the results of this reasoning.
Puyol, A.
Justícia i salut. Ètica per al racionament dels recursos sanitaris.
Barcelona: Servei de Publicacions de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1999. 186p.
ISBN: 84-490-1469-7
2000
Javier Sobrevía Vidal , Presented as a doctoral thesis in Medicine and Surgery in the Medical Faculty at the Universidad de Navarra
The aim of this thesis was to study the frequency, intensity and content of the communication which occurs between the doctor and the terminally ill cancer patient, with the aim of detecting whether or not this qualitatively and quantitatively meets the patient's expectations. A prospective study was designed in which 94 patients completed a questionnaire and an individual interview.
2001
The growing importance of bioethics in today's medicine originates, to a great extent, from clinical practice. The doctor-patient relationship has changed profoundly in just a few years. Today, doctors cannot freely decide what is good for the patient without first consulting him. For this reason, the practice of informed consent has become central to this relationship.
Pablo Simón, family physician and Professor of Bioethics, dedicated several years to writing this far-ranging and impressive piece of work, covering all the aspects of informed consent in five sections: history of informed consent, ethical and legal basis, elements of the theory; capacity or competence, practical application and the written forms for informed consent.
Simón, P.
El consentimiento informado. Historia, teoría y práctica.
Madrid: Ed. Triacastela, 2000. 480p.
ISBN: 84-930914-0-5
2002
Carmen Tomás-Valiente Lanuza, Professor of Penal Law in the Law Faculty at the Universidad de Valencia
Carmen Tomás-Valiente discusses article 143 of the new Penal Code, paying close attention to the meaning and scope of the legal text, and analyzing the reasoning on which it is based. She then goes on to consider other ways of looking at these problems together with other lines of legal argument. These provide the basis for the comparison of theories and practices which serve to help understand the large number of factors which need to be taken into consideration when specific decisions are made.
Tomás Valiente, C.
La cooperación al suicidio y la eutanasia en el nuevo código penal.
Valencia: Tirant Lo Blanc, 2000. 160p.
ISBN: 10 8484421155
2003
José Ignacio Ricarte Díez, The dissertation for his Ph.D. in Medicine from the Universidad de Zaragoza.
The health sciences are experiencing a shift in the current paradigm. The medical view of death is tending toward an interdisciplinary approach in treating the terminally ill. Palliative care units are becoming the norm in hospitals, and a person's health is increasingly viewed as a whole, a concept which transcends the more restrictive idea of health as the absence of illness. The health profession is seriously re-evaluating how it tends to the needs of the dying as these dilemmas are very difficult to resolve given the difficulty of evaluating the patient's feelings or human suffering.
Based on the ten rights of the terminally ill patient established by the Catalan-Balear Society of Palliative Care, the author conducted surveys in two public hospitals (San Jorge Hospital in Huesca and Can Misses Hospital in Ibiza) to evaluate hospital compliance with these rights.
Ricarte Díez, J.
Evaluación de los derechos de la persona en situación terminal en un hospital general.
Barcelona: Institut Borja de Bioètica, Fundación Mapfre Medicina, 2003. 155p.
ISBN: 84-7100-743-6
2004
Pablo de Lora Deltoro, Professor of Legal Philosophy at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Ethics is strictly a human issue, but its domain does not exclude animals, beings that do not possess a sense of justice. The way we behave towards animals is not morally irrelevant when they are affected by our actions. Disregarding animals simply because they do not belong to our species is an unjustifiable form of discrimination. Eradicating this discrimination would have an extraordinary impact on our attitude toward and interaction with the animal kingdom.
Using references to studies on animal behavior, history, non-western traditions and persisting institutionalized cruelty, de Lora critically analyzes ethical reflections in favor of animal well-being, just as philosophers from Pythagoras to Peter Singer have defended justice for animals both through theory and daily practice.
de Lora, P. Justicia para los animales.
La ética más allá de las humanidad.
Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2003. 342p.
ISBN: 84-206-4157-X
2005
Salvador Tarodo Soria, Doctor of Law and Philosophy at the Universidad del País Vasco
Recent legislation on the rights of health service users provides an appropriate legal framework within which to ensure respect for the autonomy of the individual within the health sector.
The increasingly diverse nature of our societies and the latest developments in medicine and biology have made our world a more interesting place, but have also made it more complicated. Moral and cultural pluralism means that we have to face the challenge of how to reconcile different concepts of life in a way which respects the values and principles enshrined in the constitution and does not violate our fundamental rights.
In the context of health, this pluralism has brought into stark relief the fact that a patient's welfare cannot be determined independently of the patient's own will. The decisions which a patient takes about his own health are probably one of the areas of his life in which he most clearly expresses his personal beliefs, which are protected by the right to freedom of conscience.
The existence of one's own space (right to privacy), the freedom to form an idea about issues which affect one's own health (right to health information) and the freedom to act in accordance with one's own beliefs (right to decide on issues which affect one's own health) are guarantees within the health context of the coherence of the individual, a source of self-respect and of respect for others, which our Constitutional Court has irrevocably linked to the dignity of the individual.
Tarodo,S. Libertad de conciencia y derechos del usuario de los servicios sanitarios.
Bilbao: Servicio Editorial.
Universidad del País Vasco/ Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatae, 2005. 408p.
ISBN: 84-8373-740-X
2006
Daniel Soutullo España, Professor of Biology at the Instituto Monte da Vila de O Grove de Pontevedra
In this book, Daniel Soutullo analyzes the importance of biology in the spectrum of human issues. The author develops a deep criticism of sociobiology, a theory which explains the social behaviours of humans through biology, beginning with the original theory and continuing through recent developments. The relation between biological evolution, cultural changes and the development of moral conduct as a distinctive human characteristic are the focus of this investigation.
Soutullo, D. Biología, cultura y ética.
Madrid: Talasa Ediciones, 2005. 142p.
ISBN: 84-96266-07-9.
2007
Iñigo de Miguel Beriain, Researcher with the Inter-University Chair in Law and the Human Genome of the Universidad del País Vasco -EHU
In the study, Iñigo de Miguel looks at cloning and the ethical and legal framework. Ten years after the birth of Dolly the sheep, he revisits the debate on cloning, updating the ethical considerations and proposing a range of ideas to address them from a current perspective.
The book also considers the past, present and future impact on our societies of the transfer of cell nuclei, whether as a result of new stem cell production techniques or directly through the cloning of human beings.
de Miguel Beriain, I.
La clonación, diez años después.
Granada: Ed. Comares, 2008. 228p.
ISBN: 978-84-9836-408-8.
2008
Antonio Casado da Rocha, Researcher at the Department of the Philosophy of Values and Social Anthropology at the Universidad del País Vasco
Casado da Rocha, A.
