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barelynangel -> RE: Should medics who helped torture be sanctioned by med.community? (4/8/2009 4:28:53 AM)
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Nope, i don't think they should be, i don't believe they violated their oaths or ethics. Their Oaths or Ethics are not to interpret or determine whether a law is correct or should be occuring, their Oaths and ethics are to make sure that within the concept of what is occuring their job is accomplished. Its not their ethical duty to determine if torture is acceptable or not, its not their ethical duty to determine if a person should be lawfully be torture. I presume the torture was occuring under lawful controlled conditions. To me this is the same as a doctor standing by to pronounce a prisoner dead or a doctor standing by while a plug is pulled. To me, a doctor isn't HELPING torture, he doesn't DO the torture, he monitors the person. Do Dr.'s in war who patch up and ship out people back to be shot again participate in the deliberate attempts to kill as they do in war? No, they don't, they do their jobs, which isn't to protect those from what is happening, its to monitor and fix what they can so the people can go back out and do it all again.
I think people are thinking that the Doctors by monitoring the person during the activities that were at the time legal, it seems to me that based on that report they were doing their job and following the ethics of the job. Until what 20 years ago, doctors NEVER got involved or rarely did with child OR spousal abuse. Should all of those doctors of that era who patched people up and sent them back into the environment be sanctioned because there was no law telling them to report it even though they felt what the person was doing by hurting another was wrong? If you think about it on a domestic level these doctors were doing the same thing as the doctors in this article, sending these women and children BACK to be tortured, maybe with instructions to the abuser not to do it so often or let them heal etc etc etc.
Doctors also have an ethical obligation to follow the law and sometimes that law isn't a concept people feel is correct, however, until the law is repealed, there need to be doctors involved in the LEGAL activity. To me this is the redcross attempting to push their moral beliefs on others and attempt to stop something by witchhunting.
That to me is what these doctors were doing and just because people are outraged about torturing of people in these circumstances, i think its ridiculous to blame the doctors for NOT feeling they should interpret the law that allowed the occurance of what was going on.
You don't have to like what the doctors did, however, i don't see how they violated their ethics anymore than doctors in war would, or doctors little more than what 20 years ago whose hands were tied and sent people back into dangerous and abusive conditions. If you start trying to morally determine an ethical duty based on a job someone does, you have to look at ALL concepts of the same actions in many different conditions. Not just the ones that you really don't like or approve of.
However, from the article, if they do it now, they would be inviolation of the law and therefore, sanctions would be appropriate in my view.
angel
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