[Trends in current medicine]

Predicting the future of medicine is daring. One can speculate about some of its future traits at the most. The spectacular progress in biological sciences has nurtured the hope that medicine will be able to dominate all ailments, improve the quality of life and longevity. Physicians are uncomfortable with the weak knowledge that they have about some diseases such as cancer, connective tissue diseases, degenerative diseases, mental and psychosocial conditions. They are also worried about the aggressive and mutilating surgical procedures that are required nowadays. One can foresee that molecular medicine and applied technology will advance at a great speed and will modify the therapy of several diseases and the social organization of health care. Scientific progress will also change our values and will pose new political and economical challenges. I believe that medical ethics and bioethics will become a growing concern for medical education and professional organizations. The so called biotechnology century will also be the bioethics century. The revision and elucidation of the fundamentals of medicine will differentiate, in the future, a medicine devoted to mankind with a solid ethical background from an impersonal health care that considers man as an object or maybe a merchandise. The second option will cast medical care through the abyss of decadence, to its end.