Browsing by Author "Valera, Luca"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 51
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Audio and panoramic video recording in the operating room: legal and ethical perspectives
    (2021) Gabrielli, Mauricio; Valera, Luca; Barrientos, Marcelo
    Introduction The idea of video recording (VR) in the operating room (OR) with panoramic cameras and microphones is a new concept that is changing the approach to medical activities in the OR. However, VR in the OR has brought up many concerns regarding patient privacy and has highlighted legal and ethical issues that were never previously exposed. Aim To review the literature concerning these aspects and provide a better ethical and legal understanding of the new challenges concerning VR in the OR. Conclusions There is a disparity between the two main legal models concerning VR in the OR, namely the European legal system (General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)) and the American legal framework (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)). This difference mainly deals with two distinct bioethical paradigms: GDPR places a strong emphasis on protecting patients' privacy to improve the public health system, whereas HIPAA indicates the need to generate protocols to safeguard the risks connected to medical activity and patient privacy. Following from this point, we may argue that, at the ethical and bioethical level, GDPR and HIPAA depend mainly on two different ethical models: a perspective based on moral acquaintances and weak proceduralism, respectively. It is worth noting the importance of developing additional guidelines concerning different world regions to avoid the ethical problems that may emerge when simply applying a foreign paradigm to a very different culture.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Beyond Application. The Case of Environmental Ethics
    (2021) Valera, Luca; Vidal, Gabriel; Leal, Yuliana
    Environmental ethics is often seen as a branch of applied ethics whose task is to offer solutions to emerging ethical dilemmas in the context of ecology. In this paper, we challenge this assumption, showing how the object of environmental ethics raises questions that go beyond that of applied ethics. We explore how the environmental issues bring up the need to inquire into the ontological status of Nature and the place of human beings in it, raising more general and far-reaching questions that do not get entrapped in the mere application. In this regard, it appears that "dwelling", in its ontological sense, is at the bottom of these questions, creating a bridge between the ontological and the practical realm. Finally, we review classical environmental ethics' paradigms highlighting the elements that go beyond applied ethics. And so, taking into account the different environmental ethics paradigms, we have two options: reducing the scope of the discipline and exclude the models that exceed it, or reconsidering it as an environmental philosophy tout court.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Bioethics and COVID-19: Considering the Social Determinants of Health
    (2022) Valera, Luca; Barreda, Rodrigo Lopez
    In this paper, we focus on a novel bioethical approach concerning the ethical implications of the Social Determinants of Health (SDs) in the time of COVID-19, offering a fresh interpretation of our agency and responsibility in the current pandemic era. Our interpretation is grounded on the idea that our health basically depends on factors that go beyond our organism. In this sense, we stress the radical importance of circumstances to ethically assess an action, in the current pandemic context. Moreover, due the centrality of the SDs in our bioethical assessments-that implies that our health does not exclusively depend on our choices, behaviors, and lifestyle-we can affirm that we are not entirely responsible for our wellness or diseases. As health depends on economic, social, cultural, and environmental factors, we argue that the analysis of personal responsibility facing personal health status should receive further consideration. In this sense, following the "social connection model," we stress the importance of the concept of "shared responsibility" in collective decisions: if we make many decisions collectively, we are also collectively responsible of these decisions. Furthermore, to responsibly tackle the social inequalities that are the underlying cause of disparities in health outcomes, we propose two main strategies based on the Capability Approach: 1. empowering the individuals, especially the most vulnerable ones; and 2. designing preventive policies and interventions that provides an opportunity to address the disparities moving forward. This will help us going beyond the "individualistic medical ethics paradigm" and integrating our concept of health with social factors (e.g., the SDs), based on a more relational and interdependent anthropological thought.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    CHALLENGING SUSTAINABILITY: FROM DECONSTRUCTION TO RECONSTRUCTION
    (2020) Valera, Luca; Salazar, Gonzalo; CEDEUS (Chile)
    In recent decades the concept of sustainability has gained great prominence in the public debate and academic research as well. Today, it is a fundamental concept to address the complex crisis we are facing at planetary scales. However, after several decades, its definition is still associated with vague and ambiguous notions that are ultimately decimating its role as a guiding framework for a more sustainable living. There is still an important gap between its theory and its praxis. The article generates a philosophical deconstruction of the sustainability concept as a necessary action to address this difficulty. This examination allows to philosophically reconstruct fundamental characteristics of its content. The article suggests and argues that a relevant component of sustainability is its regulatory function in the sphere of human relations. It suggests that sustainability is a regulative idea that works as a guide - a working concept - in the case of dilemmas that stem from the problem of maintaining responsibility towards future generations and the environment. From this standpoint, the article explores key aspects of sustainability as an ethically grounded concept and finally reflects about some applicative and educational implications.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Clinical Research Ethics: Critical and Qualitative Analysis of Facilitators and Barriers
    (2020) Valera, Luca; González, Karla; Ramos, Paulina; Altermatt Couratier, Fernando René
    To analyze the ethical challenges dealing with clinical research, we carried out a systematic review of the literature and qualitative research, determining facilitators, barriers, and ethical paradigms perceived by Chilean clinical researchers. Through the analysis of the literature, we identified the main ethical challenges involved “in” clinical research (hic et nunc) and those that arise “from” clinical research itself (ex post). Semi-structured interviews showed four critical knots associated with clinical research (founding, legislation, multi-center research, and the relationship with regulatory entities), together with facilitating aspects and barriers when implementing researches.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Clinical research in Chile: do not block the way of inquiry
    (2020) Valera, Luca; Ramos Vergara, Paulina Cecilia; Barrientos Zamorano, Marcelo; Altermatt Couratier, Fernando René; Ruiz Poblete, Sergio Marcelo; Von Bernhardi Montgomery, Rommy Edth B.; Cuello Fredes, Mauricio Arturo
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Comentarios al proyecto de ley “Muerte digna y cuidados paliativos”
    (2021) Valera, Luca; Ramos Vergara, Paulina; Pérez Hernández, Iván Modesto; Olivares Osorio, Patricia Carolina; Florenzano, Alejandra; Carrasco, Alejandra; Barrientos Zamorano, Marcelo Heriberto; Godoy F., Jaime
    The Chilean House of Representatives is discussing the bill on “Dignified death and palliative care”, which regulates the so-called medical assistance in dying or euthanasia. This paper will critically analyze the different aspects of the bill, particularly concerning four main dimensions, namely, the patient's condition at the time of requesting euthanasia; the doctor-patient relationship and respect for the autonomy of both parties; the idea of medicine involved in it; and the possible therapeutic alternatives to euthanasia. This critical analysis raises the need to discuss in more depth a project that has to do with such important decisions about our lives and that implies a radical change in the way of thinking and practicing medicine.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Contra los modelos inalcanzables. Perfección, tecnología y sociedad
    (Universidad de Valladolid, 2018) Valera, Luca
    The present article deals with the subject of the contemporary concern towards recent technological developments, starting with the current discussion about the topic of perfection. Precisely, one of the hypotheses regarding the causes of this concern is the model of perfection that the society of the technological civilization is promoting: an unattainable model. Once we have clarified the fact that the idea of perfection, which inspires contemporaneity, is an “intramundane metaphysical perfection” that seeks to eliminate certain undesired corporeal aspects, we can argue that the current social and cultural models cannot be attained for four main reasons: they are extrinsic, globalized, unreal, and dependent on the logic of technology. In this context, and based on these models, the main ethical objective of human beings becomes impossible: to be oneself.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    COVID-19 and Ethics : A Latin American Perspective
    (SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2020) Sánchez Díaz, Ignacio; López Barreda, Rodrigo; Valera, Luca
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Depth, Ecology, and the Deep Ecology Movement: Arne Naess's Proposal for the Future
    (2019) Valera, Luca
    The aim of this paper is to focus on the idea of depth developed by Arne Naess, which is related both to his research methodology and some of its anthropological/cosmological implications. Far from being purely a psychological dimension (as argued by Warwick Fox), in Naess's perspective, the subject of depth is a methodological and ontological issue that underpins and lays the framework for the deep ecology movement. We cannot interpret the question of "depth" without considering the "relational ontology" that he himself has developed in which the "ecological self" is viewed as a "relational union within the total field." Based on this point of view, I propose that we are able to reinterpret the history of the deep ecology movement and its future, while rereading its politics, from the issue of depth.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Diagnosing death: the "fuzzy area" between life and decomposition
    (2021) Carrasco, Maria A.; Valera, Luca
    This paper aims to determine whether it is necessary to propose the extreme of putrefaction as the only unmistakable sign in diagnosing the death of the human organism, as David Oderberg does in a recent paper. To that end, we compare Oderberg's claims to those of other authors who align with him in espousing the so-called theory of hylomorphism but who defend either a neurological or a circulatory-respiratory criterion for death. We then establish which interpretation of biological phenomena is the most reasonable within the metaphysical framework of hylomorphism. In this regard, we hold that technology does not obscure the difference between life and death or confect metaphysically anomalous beings, such as living human bodies who are not organisms or animals of the human species who are informed by a vegetative soul, but instead demands a closer and more careful look at the "fuzzy area" between a healthy (living) organism and a decaying corpse. In the light of hylomorphism, we conclude that neurological and circulatory-respiratory criteria are not good instruments for diagnosing death, since they can offer only probabilistic prognoses of death. Of the two, brain death is further away from the moment of death as it merely predicts cardiac arrest that will likely result in death. Putrefaction, the criterion that Oderberg proposes, is at the opposite end of the fuzzy area. This is undoubtedly a true diagnosis of death, but it is not necessary to wait for putrefaction proper-a relatively late stage of decomposition-to be sure that death has already occurred. Rather, early cadaveric phenomena demonstrate that the matter composing a body is subject to the basic forces governing all matter in its environment and has thus succumbed to the universal current of entropy, meaning that the entropy-resisting activity has ceased to constitute an organismal unity. When this unity is lost, there is no possibility of return.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Ecologia umana ed etica ambientale
    (2015) Valera, Luca
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    ELDERLY PEOPLE IN THE CONTEXT OF COVID-19: AT THE CENTRE OF ATTENTION OR ON THE MARGINS DUE TO THEIR AGE?
    (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) Vergara, Paulina Ramos; Valera, Luca; Gac, Homero; Richards Yanez, Constanza
    The present article offers an analysis from a bioethical perspective of the treatment provided to senior citizens in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. To begin with, the article highlights the paradox that exists when measures are adopted for the care of elderly people during a pandemic, and in some occasions the age of the patient is the determining factor for deciding whether to provide care or not in cases of scarcity. The question that arises then is: What is the adequate treatment for senior citizens? Using the Inter-American Convention on the Protection of the Human Rights of Elderly Persons as a point of reference, this article assesses the problem of the scarce resource allocation in the Third Age during a pandemic. As a conclusion, the pandemic is a great opportunity to reflect on the respect that we should give to every human being at every stage of his/her life.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Ética y seguridad en la investigación: aprendizajes y desafíos
    (Ediciones UC, 2022) Alarcón Bustos, Mariela; Arenas Morales, Verónica; Arévalo Nally, Constanza; Bonacic Salas, Cristián; Bravo Valenzuela, Paulina; Cabrera Oyarzún, Alejandro; Cáceres Soto, Nataly Edith; Caprile Etchart, Paola Francisca; Díaz Sacco, Alessandra; Gimpel Rivera, Jessica; Guzmán Durán, Ana María; Hilliger Carrasco, Isabel; Ibacache REyes, Felipe Andrés; López González, Dany; Martínez Pereira, Alejandra; Medina Silva, Rafael; Miranda Molina, Carlos Alberto; Muñoz Baeza, Ana; Nogueira Llovet, Amanda Antonia; Pastén González, Pablo Arturo; Pavez Guerrero, Paulina; Ramaciotti Godoy, Clara; Ramos Vergara, Paulina; Roschzttardtz Choucroun, Hannetz France; Troncoso Troncoso, Carlos Patricio; Valera, Luca; Várgas Sepúlveda, Jonathan; Santana López, Alejandra Isabel; Valera, Luca
    ¿Por qué es importante y necesaria la ética de la investigación en Chile? Se convoca aquí a más de setenta académicos y profesionales a presentar sus reflexiones, orientaciones y aprendizajes asociados al resguardo ético y de la seguridad en investigación. Este libro permite una aproximación al quehacer de las universidades chilenas abordando las temáticas que moviluzan a los comités éticocientíficos y ofrece una panorámica de sus aportes en la formación de las buenas prácticas de investigación en las comunidades universitarias. Esta publicación constituye un aporte a la literatura en la gestión de la ética y seguridad en investigación académica desde y para un público hispanohablante que sin duda contribuirá a mejorar estrategias de gestión y desarrollo en estos ámbitos, además de contribuir a la construcción de una sociedad más humana y respetuosa del entorno social, cultural y natural, en el contexto de la generación de conocimientos de alto nivel.