Discusiones acerca de la toma de decisiones médicas en el final de la vida:

configuración temática de la cobertura mediática sobre los debates en torno a la muerte digna en Argentina (2011-2015)

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the press coverage of the debates on “dignified death” in the Argentine written press in between 2011 and 2015. A news survey was carried out in La Nación, Clarín and Página/12 and the final corpus consisted of 373 articles, analyzed following quantitative and thematic strategies. In this paper we show how the circulation of ideas about dignified death is built from the preeminence of legal and family-related topics, and the little incidence of medical and/or scientific perspectives; the relevance of vegetative states and neurological damage as a health condition associated with these discussions, motivated in part by the cases that put the issue in the public sphere; the focus of coverage on emblematic cases and particular dramas; and, finally, the almost null reference to topics such as euthanasia or assisted suicide in the debates, dominated by the limitation of the therapeutic effort.