Medycyna luksusowa w ujęciu etyczno-społecznym

Abstract

A new brand of medicine, the so called “luxury medicine” is said to have developed in recent years. As opposed to the medicine in its traditional meaning it is not limited to saving human life, but it carries out certain projects and aspirations of individual people. It can be defined by a few features which distinguish it from the basic medicine: it is not therapeutic in character, its costs far excede the achieved or expected clinical results; some circumstances make even basic surgical procedures luxury medicine. Is luxury medicne wrong? Not necessarily. It is true that some of its procedures (possibly the majority) are impossible to be accepted from the ethical point of view, for example, the selection of human embryos, or the notion of a supplementary mother. However, there are also procedures, which – though they constitute a certain "luxury" in a global view – do not have to be regarded as immoral or suspect. The sheer fact of high costs or non-therapeutic nature of some medical procedures do not mean that they should automatically be assessed in a negative light. In human society there have always been differences in the financial status of citizens and some people will be able to afford medical procedures that are beyond basic medeine. Similarly, it would be a utopian idea to totally separate health care or pharmaceutics from financial dependencies. It seems, therefore, that everything depends on the general idea of society. If the good of every individual human being is the most important goal, regardless of developmental or financial status, the unquestionable right to live and have one's health taken care of, then medicine has grounds to become a means of common brotherhood and an arena of simple human love, help and kindness.