Saturday, April 3, 2010

Euthanasia in Canada: Bill C-384


Under Bill C 384 a subgroup of Canadian patients would be allowed to have the option of committing suicide with dignity assisted by a physician. Only patients at least 18 years old suffering from either terminal diseases or experiencing excruciating physical or mental pain after trying or refusing appropriate treatments are included in the Bill. Physicians assisting the procedure must be requested by capable patients in two written documents with more than 10 days apart from each other. Written confirmation of the diagnosis by another physician with no interest in the death of the patients is an obligatory prerequisite to perform voluntary euthanasia. Patients must necessarily designate a substitute decision maker with no personal interest in their death before requesting assisted suicide. Also patients are allowed to desist from their decision at any time during the process. The controversial bill is in discussion in the House of Commons. It would hold blameless any medical practitioner aiding persons looking for voluntary euthanasia under Canadian law.
The bill that legalizes euthanasia in Canada seems to be compatible with Canadian principles of self determination and care of common well being, but it has some issues to be fixed. Bill C 384 is well structured but it is flawed because it lacks specificity defining mental pain. This amendment defines a subset of patients that could be relieved of unnecessary pain. Unfortunately patients with mental illness could request euthanasia because the bill text says that patients suffering from intractable "physical or mental pain" can request assisted suicide. For example, patients suffering from chronic and untreatable mental pain due to severe depression could ask for euthanasia. However patients with mental illness are non capable of informed consent before the law, so they are not covered by the Bill. Furthermore we can ask ourselves how many of the patients would beg for assisted suicide because of a treatable depression or grief due to their illness. The Bill should be more specific and solve these issues to avoid unnecessary controversy, unnecessary requests, and giving euthanasia in possibly treatable cases.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed


Summary

Learning about the past has value considering the environmental impact that faces the earth. In the history records lays the clue to succeeding or failing in societies’ survival. Some societies have amply recorded their history and have had skill in applying this knowledge to succeed in keeping the delicate equilibrium of their ecosystems. For example, Japanese society has had a well documented tradition of historical recording and successful policies have been derived from those registers since the medieval epoch. Consequently, current Japanese society has a healthy environment and healthy inhabitants. Contrarily, a tragic example of a fallen society are the Easter Islanders. Archaeological surveys have demonstrated that Easter Island had an exuberant subtropical forest with roughly 20,000 settlers in about the tenth century. The people of Easter Island never discovered writing, and their oral tradition was insufficient to register the imperceptible environmental impact on their island for hundreds of years. The natural resources were only sufficient to feed roughly 2,000 settlers on this desolate island in about the sixteenth century. Knowing the past is not sufficient for surviving an environmental challenge because this knowledge must be accompanied by flexibility in applying it. For example, the medieval Norse settled in Greenland. They had well rooted historical traditions and customs, but failed in adapt to a new environment -the ice-. This society collapsed but their well adapted neighbours, the Inuit, survived. Current societies must record and analyse the past, adapting this knowledge to new environments and ongoing conditions. Those are essential requisites to succeed in solving current environmental issues of planet Earth.


Thursday, November 27, 2008

La tercera cultura en España

Presentación Tercera Cultura
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: 3.0 -)

La tercera cultura es un movimeinto intelectual cuya propuesta de integrar ciencia y humanidades está dando origen a nuevas disciplinas científicas, entre las que encontramos la neuroeconomía, la biopolítica,  la neuroestética y la filosofía experimental. Estas disciplinas están llamadas a cambiar los paradigmas imperantes en la actualidad y que han mantenido a las ciencias humanas  y sociales apartadas de un enfoque científico y que por otra parte han marginado a las ciencias puras de la riqueza de ideas de las humanidades y artes. Los abanderados de este movimiento proponen que el resultado de esta fusión no solo nos permitiría rebasar las fronteras del conocimiento como lo conocemos hasta hoy sino que permitiría una mejor convivencia entre los humanos y su entorno natural.

En días recientes, la tercera cultura fué  oficialmente fundada en España, el evento se llevó a cabo en Madrid y aquí dejo algunos de sus links.

Tercera cultura España

Tercera cultura EEUU

Nota de prensa El Mundo

Blog

Tercera cultura en Ecobook

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Power to the poster

















Este proyecto gráfico nos invita a descargar un poster y dejar un mensaje reflexión y esperanza en el lugar que escojamos (respetando la propiedad ajena!).

Friday, November 7, 2008

Tiger short film

Basado en el poema de William Blake. Creado por Guilherme Marcondes

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Informe Planeta Vivo 2008


Las tendencias de consumo de las poblaciones humanas no han cambiado y para el 2030 se necesitarán 2 planetas tierra para sostener el ritmo de su crecimiento y el de la explotación de los recursos. 

La calidad de la biósfera ha descendido un 30% desde 1970 hasta nuestros días.

Cada generación adquiere una deuda con el ecositema que es herdadada por sus descendientes. A la fecha un 30% de esa deuda es impagable, los intereses aumentan pero seguimos endeudanos.

En el informe encuentre también las soluciones al problema.

 

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Proyecto 10 elevado a la 100. Google

Con esta  iniciativa Google financiará con 10 millones de dólares el proyecto que beneficie a un mayor número de personas y lo haga por más tiempo.