Where Doctors Are Criminals

It always disturbs me that totalitarian regimes deliberately pick on humanitarian workers like doctors and first aiders. It happened in Assad's Syria, with similar scenes seen in Iran or Hong Kong. Such preposterous and brutal act should be condemned by the international community, and those who misconducted should be held accountable.

There is a stunning difference in the two levels of human function here. On the one hand are the medical personnel willing to risk life and their own freedom to help the sick and wounded. On the other hand is the immeasurable cruelty of targeting the opposition's doctors intentionally so that the "enemy" (even the children) will have to suffer maximally and die horribly. It speaks volumes not only about Assad, but also about Trump's pal Putin, the Iranians and others of Assad's supporters that they are just fine with such cruelty.

It's easy to condemn the moral outrages of your enemies. But the test of your morality is whether you can write about the moral outrages of your own government and its allies. As the NYT recently documented, the Israelis are killing Palestinian medical personnel. This has been going on for years, and reported in medical journals like BMJ and Lancet. The sanctions of Iraq in 1990 killed an estimated half million Iraqis, mostly children. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said, "we think the price is worth it." The war in Iraq, which was based on a lie about weapons of mass destruction, killed at 150,000 Iraqis, according to the NEJM (650,000 according to The Lancet). During the Democratic debates, we should remember that Joe Biden was a major supporter of that war. The Lancet has been writing about how the US sanctions have affected Iran. According to the US State Department, the sanctions are supposed to allow medical supplies -- butthey do not. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)31763-5/fulltext There were many more outrages under President Reagan. The Contra attacks on rural medical clinics in Nicaragua included the rape and killing of medical personnel, including Swedish doctors and nurses. I believe that the killing of humanitarian medical workers is one of the worst crimes against humanity -- but it's also immoral to use moral outrage selectively for partisan political purposes.

The world is a dangerous place. After all we are just animals. Laws keep these instincts in check and the fear of the consequences of breaking the law. Without this fear, we have anarchy. I just reread the book, Lord of the Flies.

When I lived in Miami my daughter had a hematologist who happens to be Syrian. He was the most caring doctor my daughter ever had. I am quite sure it is the same for Syrian doctors living in Syria.

This just shows that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” and I’ll tell you why. If Russia had more opposition candidates, voters could choose someone other than Putin. The connection here is that it was Russia who propped up their puppet in Syria. The “injustice anywhere” part is that Boris Nemtsov was murdered mere miles from the Kremlin. The world is interconnected. Stand up for justice. Wherever you are in the world.

Doesn't this recall physicians being arrested at the US southern border, over providing flu shots for caged children?

Thank you for reminding us of these stories and heroes. It is important to know...how can I help?

These are the good doctors, who certainly shouldn't be punished for following their professional code of ethics. However American doctors (and nurses and psychologists) who supervised torture of prisoners post-9/11 are deserving of punishment for not following theirs.

My heart goes out to these people, and all others not mentioned here. I wish them peace. I thank them for their compassion, courage and dignity in the face of horror, for showing us that humans are capable of, and can aspire, to be humane. The murderers and torturers (be they in uniform or not) too often get a pass for being depraved in conflict and war. However, these stories also show again that never again is still just a mantra to much of the world. It's an appalling betrayal by government, the international community and human beings whose complicity, silence and indifference allow this kind of depravity to happen again and again to varying degrees all over the world in both developed and developing societies.

The truest physicians. They have fulfilled their oath to a far greater measure than I ever could have.

These are horror stories from people who could afford to pay a ransom to save their lives. What happens to people who can't afford a ransom?

The courage and compassion of the medical personnel described here is inspiring. They are a light upon the darkness of the Assad regime and its enablers.

What stands out in this article is how it reinforces some of the exact thinking that is going on with the rise of fascism in the US. The pharmacist who described " the hatred of educated people who look at evidence, which is not their way" is exactly the Trump phenomenon. Driven by fear and the desire to control freedom of thought and limit empathy for those who are different is the Trump movement. Frightening.