¿ Es necesaria una bioética infectológica?

Abstract

From the proposal of "bioethics " by VR Potter on 1970, we have attended to a true explosion in this field, with a final focus on investigation involving human beings and on the limits of the heroic measures for terminal or dying patients. More than one branch of medicine, like oncology and organ transplantation, has developed its own bioethical rules. Has come the time for infectious diseases? In our speciality, problems arise about the rationality of diagnostic procedures, the antimicrobial therapy and the politics on immunization. In therapeutics, the omission of some wide spectrum antibiotics on the basis of ecological and economics reasons, may require an informed consent, with all the restrictions that such a consent has, meanwhile on the field of immunization, the imposition of controversial vaccines could be a transgression of individual autonomy and the high cost of those not included in state programs constitute an unacceptable inequity. The multiple dilemmas in infectious diseases, however, can be resolved without a code of rules, but the help of ethical committees could be useful in the most troublesome cases.