Medicine and humanism from the 20th century

• April 29, 2024

With the purpose of creating and promoting a space for reflection on health and life, the Juárez del Centro Hospital and the Institutional Bioethics Committee carry out the Cycle of Magisterial Conferences of Bioethics 2010, where they participate in the exhibition, professors of recognized trajectory in the field.

Every last Thursday of the month lectures are held in the "Dr. José Castro Villagrana ", where this July 29, Dr. Carlos Viesca Treviño, coordinator of the postgraduate course in Bioethics at the UNAM, gave the lecture of the month entitled "Medical practice and the exercise of virtue."

Throughout the presentation, the specialist indicated that "virtue" is a Greek term that refers to Strength and substance to achieve an objective. He stressed the importance of the individual to achieve excellence, as an intelligent and free decision in the execution of a specific action.

It was assumed that ethics is a philosophical reflection of morality, which does not exist as the only one, but rather It is variable in how much to the historical evolution, allowing or prohibiting new things depending on the context where it is.

"If you talk about medicine, you should not stop talking about humanism," said the speaker, "a medical ethics is not associated with a religious creed or belief." From the twentieth century, humanism can no longer be excluded from the field of medicine, thanks to the fact that there are transformations in definitions in the science that has changed it.

Genome and Humanism

Today, to say that an individual is qualified as human, refers to having a human genome. Everyone who has that code is. The definitions that try to make differences between human and semi-human, do not fit nowadays. Which makes the discovery of the genome a medical breakthrough in how much it transforms it into an advantage for medical humanism.

The specialist indicated that Bioethics seeks the good of the other. An improvement in the human condition, to what could be called "humanistic medicine". It is what leads to personal satisfaction on the part of the one who practices medicine, regardless of the payment received.

The doctor Carlos Viesca concluded his speech mentioning that medicine poses a humanity that starts from knowledge to alleviate a need in the other, which demands knowledge , the devotion to continue learning and the will to serve.

The conference closed with the reflection on how the 21st century needs humanism and medicine take into consideration the other. Doctor and patient must enjoy the development of the self but with a projection, towards the other, to society and towards humanity.

Video Medicine: Jérôme Lejeune. "One of the greatest humanists of the 20th century." (April 2024).