Reflections on health information and its ethical dimension

Abstract

It is argued that, in health, the ethical problems that beset or occur in the handling of information reaching under a special dimension of meaning that this information is for the health of the population. In the case of health care between ethical abominations not only the classical expressions observed in any field, such as plagiarism, false authorship or duplicate publications. It also has what is distorted, which is said to mean, what is hidden and what is invented. Using real and recent examples, illustrates how the press, scientist and specialized journals may incur into these serious faults in communicating and disseminating health information, regardless of the area in question, be it clinical, epidemiological or the basic sciences. They can occur under scientific ignorance suffering in the least alarming case, or because of a mere irresponsible behavior, in more serious cases, but also as derivative commercial greed and desire in the worst and most common of them.