“We will reflect on how to comfort a patient in the last hours of his life, considering the traditional values of respect and protection of life on both sides of the universe of pain in which lies a dying person and with him the family members who assist him”: it was said by professor Ben Zylick, medical director of a group of “hospices” in East Yorkshire, England, who will speak at the international congress that will open in the Vatican next Monday, named “At the side of the terminally-ill and dying person: ethical and operational orientation". According to Zylick, “often, in front of a terminally-ill patient, there are no black and white solutions, i.e. whether this or that type of medical and therapeutic approach is better. So the doctors, in consultation with the family or the sick person, should develop the best possible therapeutic-medical proposal, thus helping raise the awareness that death is naturally part of life and must be faced, although in its dramatic force, with as much serenity as possible”. Professor Gian Luigi Gigli, neurologist in the hospitals of Udine, spoke of the developments of the studies conducted by professor Jamanaka, from Kyoto, who discovered a way to produce, from adult stem cells, some totipotent cells that are similar to embryo stem cells. “The future use of such cells, on which we working in over 70 protocols he added , will produce results that will hopefully be very promising, without having to use any human embryos”.
