Medicine, values and communication

Salvador Casado

Modern medicine has achieved a spectacular development in the last century in parallel with the rest of society. Spurred on by science and technology it has managed to overcome ambitious goals and shines proudly on the basis of its achievements. Unfortunately, there is a long shadow that contains burdens and threats. Inequalities in health, overdiagnosis and overtreatment, iatrogeny, the progressive dependence of citizens on health systems are increasingly present realities.

Illustration by Paula Alvear, from the poems Arconte Enfurecido

On the other hand, private health systems and the enormous conglomerates of pharmaceutical and technological industries based on profit seek interests that are increasingly distant from the common good. In the face of these interests, public health systems are slowly collapsing due to under-funding, cutbacks and the chronic overloading of their professionals. Everyone agrees on the complexity of managing alternatives but no one dares to implement them. Meanwhile, the public health systems are melting like butter as services are outsourced, professionals working conditions get worse or units are reconverted and closed (Public Health and others).

Who’ll talk about us when we’re dead?

Antoni Peris

First of all, allow me to recommend that you rush out to see A ghost story (D. Lowery, 2017). It's not a ghost movie. It's a movie with ghosts. It's not a movie about grief. It’s a film about permanence, about memory, about the permanence of memory and our will to endure as human beings. We are asked, what will remain of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven when a thousand years have passed. And what will remain of us? Who will remember our passing through this world? The presence of A ghost story (ironically presented as one of those phantasms of children's stories, with a bed sheet and holes to see through) is something that refuses to disappear, perhaps the boy that appears at the beginning of the movie, perhaps the ghost of the house, or of the place, or perhaps the accumulation of experiences that take form whilst trying to continue their existence; It’s a beautiful and serene film exploring whether our existence and memory make any sense.

Justice and equity in the health system

Xavier Bayona

Should we review the principle of justice from an ethical perspective? If so, we’ll notice that it’s a principle of minimums (of coexistence) faced with the principle of happiness – a principle of maximums ("individual justice") and, unfortunately, we’re often erring by thinking we speak of justice when in fact we speak of happiness (or individual convenience). Similarly, from the bioethical standpoint, justice can be defined as the fact of treating each one appropriately, in order to reduce situations of inequality (ideological, social, cultural, economic, etc.). On the other hand, equity is defined as giving each individual no more and no less of what they need. Following these definitions, when we speak of justice and equity, deep down, we are doing a reiteration, because they are synonymous.