The Triage of "Blameworthy" Patients

One question that has sometimes cropped up in the debate on triage and the management of scarce healthcare resources concerns patients’ merits, demerits, and responsibility with regard to their own medical condition. During the current pandemic, some have wondered, when it comes to accessing healthcare, whether patients who have refused vaccination, despite the availability of vaccines and pressure to get vaccinated from the health authorities, should be given the same priority as patients who have diligently undergone vaccination in accordance with the authorities’ recommendations. The issue of patients’ merits and demerits is not new, and it did not emerge with the pandemic for the first time. In the past, the question was often posed whether terrorists have the right to receive the same treatment as their victims, with the same degree of priority, all clinical conditions being equal. Another issue that has been raised concerns patients suffering from diseases caused by unhealthy lifestyles that they have freely adopted: drinking, smoking, eating fatty foods, practising extreme sports, etc. The conclusion reached in the present article is that it is indeed possible to identify certain general rules for cases of this sort, as is shown by the literature on the topic. However, slavishly following these rules, even in exceptional cases for which it is impossible to make detailed provisions, can lead to disastrous consequences. Therefore, following Aristotle, the article seeks to take account both of the rule of justice and of equity, which is a form of “situational justice” capable of filling the gaps of general norms in the light of concrete cases

Man Is What He Eats: The Philosophy and Ethics of Eating

The article is based on Feuerbach's well-known ruling that "man is what he eats", to analyse its possible different meanings, even the most recondited ones. To do this the research winds through a long journey, which begins with a reflection on the role that food has in some Western religions, especially in Judaism and Christianity. Two processes which have deeply characterized the relationship of Western man with food are then examined: the process of industrialization and that of the medicalization of food. Finally, coming to the contemporary, the article goes into the merits of the relationship that different cultures have with food in a multicultural society and offers some indications for alternative models compared to those currently dominant. The conclusion, with Feuerbach and beyond Feuerbach, is that man is yes what he eats, but also what he does not eat and, above all, man eats what he is

Responsibility as an Ethical Framework for Public Health Interventions

Bioethical debate has been characterized from the beginning by the central importance placed on autonomy. This is because bioethics has, until now, been concerned with the relationship between doctor and patient in a clinical context or, alternatively, with the rights of individuals involved in biomedical research. The increased involvement of bioethics in the domain of public health, however, makes it necessary to refer to other principles and values, thus shaping a new responsibility- focused bioethics that extends itself beyond the early boundaries of this discipline