2023-10-31 03:00:00
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Edmund D. Pellegrino, American doctor specializing in Bioethics (1920-2013), studied at the Jesuit Xavier High School in Manhattan. His university education took place at St. John’s University. His graduate studies were at New York University.
Professor of Bioethics, he was director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. He was a pioneer in introducing the humanities into medical schools. His respect for the sick was forged by caring for tuberculosis patients in a hospital.
He lived in times of important social and medical changes, whose experience is at the origin of medical ethics books of extraordinary value, such as A philosophical Basis of Medical Practice (1981); For the Patient’s Good (1988); The Christian Virtues in Medical Practice (1996) (translated by Universidad Pontificia de Comillas). At his death, Pellegrino’s bibliography included more than 600 important articles and 24 books with a strong doctrinal bias.
Bioethics
Bioethics is defined as “the safeguard of prudence and responsibility for difficult times, for circumstances that threaten humanity” and reflects on scientific advances and the impact of the latest technologies that have been developed on the origin of life. (inheritance, genetic manipulation, cloning, assisted reproduction, contraception, rights of minors) and also at the end of life (life support, redefinition of death, transplants, admissions to Intensive Care Units).
Bioethics is a necessary path to follow. Values must be integrated into decision-making to improve the quality of medical acts. Paul Ricoeur, philosopher and anthropologist (1913-2005), noted that “ethics is the view of a good life, with and for others.”
Every doctor and healthcare worker has to explore, diagnose, predict and treat, but, in addition, they must “integrate values into decision-making in order to improve the quality of medical acts.” We must set guidelines for the exceptional technological changes we are experiencing. Deliberation is necessary. Every patient deserves compassion, respect and prudence.
Bioethics was born at the end of the last century. It was a term created by Van Rensselaer Potter, who coined the four fundamental principles:
Autonomy, respecting people’s preferences. Beneficence, not only not doing evil but promoting good. Non-maleficence (Primun non nocere), first do no harm. Justice, equitably distributing resources.
Edmund D. Pellegrino
Pellegrino believes that the patient’s autonomy does not mean that the doctor must always proceed as the patient demands. The patient’s autonomy can distort a problem for his own conscience and compromise the first principle of action.
It rescues the principle of beneficence above that of autonomy. It also has criticisms for Informed Consent to patients.
Patient autonomy does not mean that the doctor must always proceed as the patient demands.
Edmund PellegrinoPhysician specialist in Bioethics
Let’s see what his contributions were to Bioethics. The purpose of medicine, which is to cure, determines the virtues and obligations of the health professional.
For Pellegrino, medicine is fundamentally a moral activity and he used to define it as “the most scientific of the humanities and the most humanistic of the sciences.”
An important book of his was The Virtues of Medical Practice. Specialization causes doctors to forget the concept of “moral community” and pay attention only to technical advances.
The moral nature of medicine demands that it not be left to the free market. If expenses are cut, the primacy of the patient’s good must be the guide.
The professionalism of the doctor is not only the precision of the diagnosis and technical resources, but above all the humanization of treatment with the patient.
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