The Value of Life
Gonzalo Herranz. Bioethics department , University of Navarra
Talk at the El Vedat high school
Valencia, 1991
One of the things that impresses me most about medicine is the tremendous difference that can exist between a doctor and a patient in terms of the value of life. For the patient, his or her own, unique life is of incalculable value, in the face of which everything else pales in comparison. For the doctor, a patient’s life is just one among the hundreds he or she must attend to. For the patient, losing one’s life is the most decisive event of their entire existence—an event of cosmic proportions. For the doctor, a life lost is often a mere setback, something that is inevitably part of the daily routine.
And, curiously enough, what happens to the doctor is happening—more and more—to others, to ordinary people, to those who read the newspaper and watch the news: every day, human lives are lost in droves—in natural disasters, accidents, acts of terrorism, wars, due to illness, malnutrition, or hunger, and due to abortion. In our information-saturated society, we’re becoming increasingly desensitized to the lives that are lost. The value of human life is being devalued.
How is it possible, then, that we confidently go to the doctor and place our lives—each of our own, unique, and irreplaceable—in their hands, even though we know that to the doctor we are just another life, one among many? Because we know that, even though the doctor is seasoned by the experience of many lost lives, professional ethics compel him to respect them all, to care for them all with the utmost respect, without discriminating against them on the basis of age, sex, race, religious belief, or political convictions. We go to the doctor because we assume that he has been taught—or has discovered on his own—the unique value of every human being.
The doctor knows that every human being is not only a biological marvel, but also a miracle. Each one of us—even someone with an intellectual disability—sees the world, interprets it, and thinks about it in our own unique and irreplaceable way. The greatest marvel of all is not that each person’s genome—the DNA inherited from their parents—is different from everyone else’s. What is truly remarkable is that each of us is capable of knowing the world, of loving it, and of enjoying it in a core topic —absolutely our own, staff. In a cathedral, no two people sing or pray the same way. In a packed stadium, each person watches the soccer game in their own way, each with a passion distinct from everyone else’s. Wine mixed with soda tastes to me the way it has never tasted to anyone else—and never will—in the entire history of the world.
The doctor knows that every patient experiences and copes with illness in his or her own unique way, and, given this diversity, there are days when he is inclined to conclude that there are no illnesses, only patients. He knows—though he sometimes lacks the time to think it through thoroughly—that the death of a human being, whoever that person may be, is the death of a world.
We must frequently ask ourselves what the value of a human life is, so that we may learn to respect the world that each of us represents. We must make this the focus of our conversations at certain times. One such time is now, as it has been announced that John Paul II is going to publish an encyclical on the value of human life. He is a great teacher in the subject, and we must listen to him carefully.