Thirty years of history and towards the future

In 2022, the Federal Council of Medicine elected a new board of directors, continuing its trajectory in Brazilian medicine. Helena Maria Carneiro Leão MD, elected by the state of Pernambuco, was invited by José Hiran da Silva Gallo MD to become second secretary, succeeding Tatiana Bragança de Azevedo Della Giustina MD, who performed the role brilliantly and carried out her mission in a remarkable way.

Understanding the responsibility, Helena Leão MD has the support of the new board and staff, who are devoted to this journal. We will thus move forward, with new ideas, without straying from the path set by or discarding the achievements of our predecessors. We will continue to reiterate the change of the editorial plan implemented when Prof. Rui Nunes, Prof. Natália Teles, and CFM’s president Dr. José Hiran da Silva Gallo took on the roles of honorary scientific editor, assistant scientific editor, and scientific editor, respectively.

In 2022, Revista Bioética celebrates 30 years of existence. Many transformations took place in Brazil, especially after 1988, with the promulgation of the Federal Constitution, which provided for principles on human dignity and autonomy. Therefore, in 1992, following the country’s ethical and bioethical context, council members realized the dream of creating this journal, which provides great contributions to the most diverse themes, not only in the field of biomedicine, but also in philosophy, law, and others, addressing bioethics regarding human and planetary survival¹ .

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2020² , raised bioethical reflections for humanistic discussions that would guide that moment of transformations we were living and the difficulties faced worldwide. The pandemic put education, health care, social responsibility, and the role of the government on the agenda, considering all circumstances faced by health professionals and managers, besides new communication technologies.

The ethics in the use of prognostic scores in intensive care units³ was discussed during the pandemic, showing that new updates are extremely important for future perspectives, which must consider death and dying in medical education. This theme must be discussed in undergraduate courses, based on humanistic principles, so that future professionals can deal with terminability. In this context, discussions and studies on brain death and other issues such as death, finitude of life, and palliative care are relevant.

Discussions on training in ethics and bioethics for health professionals present challenges in Brazil and worldwide, since many medical schools are opened but fail to ensure the quality of education nor the training of professionals. Thus, concerns arise regarding the future of medicine and health as a whole, as all ethical, humanistic, and bioethical principles are consolidated during graduation. Ethics education in line with human rights and bioethics shows that humanities are the pillar of interpersonal relationships, and studying them is essential.

Also concerning education, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected health professionals, especially regarding intercultural relations. This situation is related to the autonomy and health care provided to populations of different cultures, such as native communities, by practical actions. Reflecting on the life in the Amazon region and the effects of human attitudes shows that these actions must be based on good, righteous, and balanced values, which prove that care is a principle inherent to our own existence.

May Revista Bioética continue to promote debates, exchange of knowledge and experiences and offer the opportunity to share ethical reflections and objectives in 2022! Even in pandemic and post-pandemic times, many ethical and bioethical dilemmas will provoke us and contribute to our debates, which seek the good of humanity.

Our last words are of gratitude, for the trust placed in us, and of hope, so that we may increasingly value bioethics and life. For this reason, we bring part of a poem by Dom Hélder Câmara in his book Um olhar sobre a cidade:

What do stars say when they shine?

(...) I like to tell myself: count the stars if you can. I know, very well, that I will be unable to... Even so, I feel delight in starting over a thousand times such an impossible task that leads me to the usual conclusion: it is impossible to be frivolous when, before my eyes, every night, I watch millions of worlds singing the vastness and generosity of Our Creator and Father! (…)⁴ .

We wish you a good reading of this issue, and celebrating our 30 years, a toast to everyone!

Towards the future!

Referências

• ¹
  Brasil. Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil de 1988. Diário Oficial da União [Internet]. Brasília, 5 out. 1988 [acesso 3 jun 2022]. Disponível: https://bit.ly/3oaYZpW
  » https://bit.ly/3oaYZpW
• ²
  Organização Mundial da Saúde. Histórico da pandemia de covid-19. OPAS [Internet]. [s.d.] [acesso 3 de jun 2022]. Disponível: https://bit.ly/3xOwsN3
  » https://bit.ly/3xOwsN3
• ³
  Conselho Regional de Medicina do Estado de Pernambuco. Recomendação nº 5, de 27 de abril de 2020. Recomenda a utilização do Escore Unificado para Priorização (EUP-UTI) de acesso a leitos de terapia intensiva, assistência ventilatória e paliação, como meio de hierarquização da gravidade dos pacientes, na ausência absoluta de leitos suficientes para atender a demanda terapêutica. Diário Oficial da União [Internet]. Brasília, nº 80, p. 107, 28 abr 2020 [acesso 3 jun 2022]. Seção 1. Disponível: https://bit.ly/3QTmRf8
  » https://bit.ly/3QTmRf8
• ⁴
  Câmara DH. Um olhar sobre a cidade. São Paulo: Paulus; 1995. p. 152.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  01 Aug 2022
• Date of issue
  Apr-Jun 2022