Bioethical Principles

Addendum to the Letter of Bioethical Principles of AME-Brazil, established in the VI National Congress of the Medical Spiritual Associations from Brazil

We, spiritists doctors, congregated in the VI Medinesp, in São Paulo city, in June 8th 2007, elaborate the following Letter of Principles, from the studied thematic:

The present time of the Brazilian social context involves subjects related to the medical area that, for the gravity up against the
primordial right to the life, demand clear positioning and firm attitudes. Some of these topics have raised doubts and mistaken
interpretations upon our last Letter of Principles (2005).

Some questions are frequent to the Spiritist doctors movement, to which we try to clarify.

What it is natural death?
It is the one that comes about the natural exhaustion of the organs, in consequence of the age or for the exhaustion of the vital fluid in result of the life habits or pathology.

What is orthotanasia?
The orthotanasia term, in medical language, means death in the
correct time or natural death, and it is a procedure that aims at the humanization of death, without the use of ways to shorten life and also without taking attitudes to keep it. The term for the Medicine has a different meaning from the used one in the legal area, which uses it as synonymous of passive euthanasia, generating such mistakes.

Which is the positioning of the Spiritist Doctor Movement concerning the resolution of the Federal Advice of Medicine upon the orthotanasia?
The Resolution nº 1805, from the Federal Advice of Medicine, published in Federal official gazette in November 26th 2006, is in accordance with the agreement of AME-Brazil as for the definition of the term, worrying us only the applicability and the inspection of the procedures on the same one.

How should we proceed up against the position from the Federal Government upon the decriminalization of the abortion, based on the statement that it would be a problem of public health? We are totally contrary to this position, because the right to the life is inviolable and divine. To legalize the abortion is not alone to decriminalize the agent of such a hideous act. More than this, the legalization is to act against this right, in special of the one of an innocent and incapable to fight by itself. The solution for the problem of public health due to the consequences of the clandestine abortions is not to legalize or decriminalize the abortion, offering access to this criminal act. The way is to offer adequate and continuous education to all population, aiming at efficient ways of familiar planning, without assuming action of ordinariness for sexual activity and the affective relationship.

What is Anencephaly and which is opinion about the legalization of the abortion of anencephalus?
The Anencephaly is not a condition of complete absence of the central nervous system and the anatomical defects are from different degrees. There is always the preservation of diencephalon - headquarters of the action of the spirit in the physical body and neurological base for the organic life. And the anencephalus, independently of the possible expectation of survival, must not have violated its right of living and fulfilling the intentions for its existence and incarnation.

How the Spiritist Physician Movement acts concerning the techniques of assisted reproduction? We are favorable to the techniques, but with the concern of the necessity of the improvement of the same ones, in order to prevent the production of exceeding embryos.

Which must be the position concerning the exceeding embryos not transferred in the In vitro fertilization?
The decisions in this subject fit to the couples involved.

Considering, therefore, all the ranks above, we reaffirm that the Spiritisit Doctor Movement is:

Against the euthanasia and the dystanasia, authenticating the choice of therapeutical attitudes that allow to the natural death
with less suffering and total support for the patient and the family;

Against any forms of breaking the right to the life, which initiates with the fecundation and it ceases in the
deincarnation;

In favor of health politics that promote the education of the population, aiming at the Christians- ethical principles;

In favor of any therapeutical actions that, in the infertility case, make possible to the couple the chance to promote and value the
family.