Open AccessCancer: a perspective of human dignity and informed consent from ethics and justice
Author(s) -
Dora Elvira García-González,
Xenia Anaid Rueda Romero
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
revista de salud pública/revista de salud publica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.195
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 2539-3596
pISSN - 0124-0064
DOI - 10.15446/rsap.v22n3.84536
Subject(s) - dignity , economic justice , intersubjectivity , respect for persons , autonomy , informed consent , psychology , nursing ethics , bioethics , environmental ethics , sociology , medicine , beneficence , law , political science , social science , psychiatry , alternative medicine , philosophy , pathology
This article attempts to reflect on the importance of thinking in general about illness and about cancer, from an ethical perspective. This approach reveals the central role of personal dignity and the moral relevance that supports the reasons for respecting people. The ethical values that sustain the practice of medicine must aim at uplifting this dignity and seeking situations of justice, since living in a community expresses intersubjectivity that cannot be truncated by illnesses like cancer. Therefore, situations involving poverty cannot justify the lack of health care, and if such lacks occur, they run counter to ethical awareness in the deepest sense and destroy intersubjectivity. As a result, cancer is suffered as a vital experience, in a framework of lives that are lived and are not simply objects of study; those stricken with cancer are individuals who are denied the human right to health, and undergo the elimination of their dignity, the cancelation of justice, and a death sentence. Society is part of these actions and at the same time, suffers from the disappearance of hope.In this sense, the process of informed consent is used as a tool that encourages dialog and understanding between doctors and patients during proper treatment, on a shared path.