The changes in life cycles

Changes are necessary and a part of life. There is the time to sow and the time to harvest...

In 2019, I was surprised by being elected for the Brazilian Federal Council of Medicine (CFM)¹ , which brought many expectations of me as a representative of the physicians of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. I started working at Revista Bioética as chief editor, according to the position for which I was assigned, Second Secretary to CFM’s board.

The challenge of learning the routines, working with a new team, and continuously seeking more for our journal was a great one. We implemented a bold plan of changes to the editorial body, with Professor Rui Nunes as honorary scientific editor, Professor Natália Teles as honorary assistant scientific editor, and José Hiran Gallo MD as scientific editor, which allowed us to fly higher. With this, we achieved the excellent A2 classification from the Coordination of Higher Education and graduate Training (CAPES)² , the highest grade achieved by a journal of multiple subjects in Brazil, as is our Revista Bioética .

In 2020, after the uncertainties that covid-19 brought us, we had the opportunity to organize three bioethics webinars with the title “Bioethics in times of covid-19”, addressing several themes:

1. “The physician-patient relationship/Deontological ethics versus utilitarian ethics”;

2. “How to act in a situation of scarce resources from the point of view of medical ethics?/Justice and equity of public health systems and their ethical dilemmas”;

3. “Ethics in scientific investigation and research/The role of the World Health Organization,” with the brilliant participation of Professor Rui Nunes.

In 2021, two webinars were held:

1. “Bioethics and the post-pandemic world,” with the participation of Professor Rui Nunes;

2. “Ethical issues of clinical genetics,” presented by Professor Natália Teles.

The first bioethics webinar held in 2020 was a pioneer when it comes to a completely virtual event organized by CFM and the high expectations were translated into a successful event with thousands of views. After that, other areas of the council began to hold virtual events, thus disseminating relevant topics to the whole community.

On March 24, 2021, we were awarded with our indexation on the international platform Scopus³ and we have ambitious plans to also enter the renowned Web of Science platform. Our entire team has been working hard to raise the journal’s impact factor and we are sure that, all in due time, this achievement will be of great relevance not only to CFM, but to the entire academic community that relies on this journal to publish their research articles and updates.

We changed the journal’s layout and adopted a new symbology: technology is the bridge to the future crossed by all of humanity. The bridge represents the movement towards the future.

It was a privilege to have participated in this revival of Revista Bioética , which completes 30 years of existence in 2022. There were many changes: new contacts, expansion of the editorial board, layout change, new indexation. Other goals will still come to fruition, such as the creation of a biolaw sector, of which I am grateful for the tireless collaboration of Giselle Crosara Lettieri Gracindo MD, with her generous contribution to the journal’s growth.

I would like to acknowledge the earnestness and commitment of our employees: Vanessa Sertão and Lorna Weil, who have always kept us ahead in our publications. Thus, as in the last two years there have been many changes due to the pandemic, the very focus of the articles published has changed, since the needs to meet bioethical principles have been fundamental for the guidance of public and private administrators, in addition to the related legal decisions.

In these two years of pandemic, labor has been arduous and bioethics remain an essential theme for humanity. The pandemic also raised critical issues for all of us, and the role of bioethics was fundamental in the resolution of health issues and in the criteria for adequate resources distribution. Our role is to seek clarification and offer a critical vision that facilitates the understanding of current and important topics, such as the finitude of human life, the development of mourning, and the false dilemma of prioritizing health or the economy, in the context of analyzing the effects of society’s inequality.

As Zarathustra, poet and Persian prophet, states in Nietzsche’s Thus spoke Zarathustra: “ Everything goes, everything comes back; the wheel of being rolls eternally. Everything dies, everything blossoms again; the year of being runs eternally ”⁴ .

I will forever be grateful for such a welcoming reception and for the opportunity to do something that may have positively impacted the journal. Everything that is done with lightness and pleasure bears good fruit...

I am sure that in the next management, my friend and colleague Helena Carneiro Leão MD⁵ , with her brilliance and competence, will continue the good initiatives. Her new ideas will always do good!

An excellent year to all and enjoy reading this first edition of 2022!

Referências

• ¹
  Conselho Federal de Medicina. Mauro Ribeiro é eleito presidente do CFM e defende valorização dos médicos e da Medicina. Portal CFM [Internet]. 2019 [acesso 25 fev 2022]. Disponível: https://bit.ly/35UTyX6
  » https://bit.ly/35UTyX6
• ²
  Universidade Federal do Vale do São Francisco. Qualis Capes Unificado. Portais Univasf [Internet]. 2020 [acesso 25 fev 2022]. Disponível: https://bit.ly/3KNTwPL
  » https://bit.ly/3KNTwPL
• ³
  Scopus preview. Scopus [Internet]. 2021 [acesso 25 fev 2022]. Disponível: https://bit.ly/3qqJZX9
  » https://bit.ly/3qqJZX9
• ⁴
  Friedrich Nietzsche. Escritas.org [Internet]. [s.d.] [acesso 25 fev 2022]. Disponível: https://bit.ly/3t6u3ee
  » https://bit.ly/3t6u3ee
• ⁵
  Conselho Federal de Medicina. CFM terá nova diretoria a partir de 1º de abril. Portal CFM [Internet]. 2022 [acesso 25 fev 2022]. Disponível: https://bit.ly/3CVhQfT
  » https://bit.ly/3CVhQfT

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  09 May 2022
• Date of issue
  Jan-Apr 2022