La revelación del diagnóstico: el lugar de la beneficencia, autonomía y veracidad en la ética médica / The disclosure of diagnosis: the place of beneficence, autonomy and veracity in medical ethics

RESUMO

Objective: The moral doctrine of diagnosis disclosure is derived from a respect for the patient's autonomy as well as the patient's beneficence. These two goals are not necessarily incompatible, but they often lead to different decisions about what information needs to be shared with patients. The ethics of veracity does not prescribe duties, either old or new, but implies a new way of thinking about ethics. Method: Theories of the three general sorts just mentioned are identified and explained here. Results: The ethics of veracity as such is limited to unmasking the falsifications of desire that inhabit the moral life. This would meet the moral goals of shared decision-making, because patients could make sense of such data. Conclusions: Certainly other moral doctrines may turn out to be relevant to the problems discussed in this paper. Nonetheless, they are sufficientely comprehensive to provide an analytical framework by means of which moral problems of diagnosis disclosure can be evaluated. We cannot expect anything else from the enterprise of the ethics of veracity but a critique of authenticity. Its force is that of suspicion, not justification or legitimation, and still less that of prescription