Obligations to mankind
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Obligations to mankind
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Do doctors have an obligation to mankind in other areas other than medicine, for example, should they and can they stand up against genocides and human rights violations that occur or have occurred in
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Obligations to mankind
posted at 6/5/2012 12:04 AM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 71
First: 3/4/2012 Last: 31/5/2012 |
Do doctors have an obligation to mankind in other areas other than medicine, for example, should they and can they stand up against genocides and human rights violations that occur or have occurred in the world. Can doctors join in political marches and rallies?
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Re: Obligations to mankind
posted at 6/5/2012 7:09 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 3059
First: 27/3/2012 Last: 13/6/2013 |
Very good question 'researchPO' Please do not forget that doctors are afterall a part of the general society!, thereby we have inherently all the rights & responsibilities towards community, a common man have. I think we must always support the good public decisions & fight unitedly against injustice. |
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Re: Obligations to mankind
posted at 6/5/2012 8:41 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 71
First: 3/4/2012 Last: 31/5/2012 |
Thank you for your comments. I asked this question because I find clinicians I have personally met are releucant to get involved in humanitarian efforts outside of medicine, e.g. raising awareness for the atrocious genocide of the Bosnian people and the rape of Bosnian women during the war in the 1990s. That is just one example. Looking forward to more opinions. |
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Re: Obligations to mankind
posted at 6/5/2012 9:15 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 155
First: 29/11/2010 Last: 28/5/2013 |
Every sane person should stand against human rights violation,genocide/innocent killings.Being doctor doesn't take anything away from you.You must oppose the things that are unjust, unlawful & oppressing the community or the mankind at large. |
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Re: Obligations to mankind
posted at 7/5/2012 9:28 AM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 71
First: 3/4/2012 Last: 31/5/2012 |
I completely agree with you all, and it is very inspiring what has been discussed. I wonder if the reluctance I have seen in some clinicians to raise awareness and opoose human rights violations is related to the fact that some members of our UK community may be from those very countries committing these atrocities on others. I wonder if this makes clinicians feel they may be "judging" their patient, and this stops them from doing a greater good? What effect would it have on their patient if the patient knew their doctor opposed unethical situations occuring in their ethnic background country, which the patient was not opposed to themselves? |
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Re: Obligations to mankind
posted at 7/5/2012 12:10 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 2135
First: 12/3/2010 Last: 18/6/2013 |
rPO, I fear that many discussions on the ethical and humanitarian behaviour of doctors ignore the fact that they are human. Neville Chamberlain (UK PM at the time) said that the occupation of Czechslovakia by Nazi Germany in 1938 was, "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing". Like many Britons of that time, Chamberlain had been traumatised by the first World War, and felt it his duty to avoid another conflict, so that his apparent gross insensitivity was understandable in that light. In the conflict that inevitably followed, the behaviour of many Germans towards Jews was little more than the same attitude expressed by Britons of the 1930s, except that the rise of the Nazi party allowed them to perform acts that in the UK did not gain that social permission. Oh, dear! I have already invoked Godwins Law (as a thread gets longer the probability of invoking Nazism approaches 1) and this is only post 7! But the Nazi phenomenon was the most extreme and the closest to Western European experience, so it is relevant to this discussion. But we need not go as far back. The Bosnian Wars are just yesterday in comparision and showed the same social permission by a political movement to persecute a minority, and the reluctance by outside powers to first, believe that such horrors could exist and then to take action to prevent them. That those powers did awake in the end shows that we can learn from history, though only slowly and partially. The Ruanda/Burundi tragedy was another example, that was in such a faraway country of which we know nothing that nothing was done until far too late. But we were told, of the Bosnian and Ruandan situations, by brave journalists who went here and brought back stories and pictures. This true of Chechnya, North Korea, Burma/Myanmar and many other places in the world. So we are told of persecution and oppression, almost daily in our news. Some invoke 'news fatigue', and it is difficult to know which of the many desperate situations we should involve oursleves in, unless you have some personal or experiential connection to that country, far way. Also, it is diffiult to know how to get involved, and then if your efforts will be as wasted as not buying that country's products at the supermarket. We can only choose what we will try to acheve, and I'm sorry, rPO, if your chosen cause is not mine, but I am as human as you, and I have too little time, money and energy to devote to every cause on Earth. John PS But you are right to be angry, about the oppression and about the lack of opposition! |
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Re: Obligations to mankind
posted at 10/5/2012 3:32 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 149
First: 25/5/2011 Last: 14/6/2013 |
The problem is of course that we are a tribal species and our history has always been a blood-stained litany of one group attempting to dominate another. My concern over this suggestion is that it may invoke a quasi-religious idealism for what other doctors should believe in and, as a group, represent. For an example, I am sure that a lot of doctors are opposed to slavery. Now this concept has no relevance to clinical practice, but I suggest owes a lot to doctors' backgrounds, their world experience and current legislation. I would however worry if told that I had to hold this view because of an ideal that I had "obligations to mankind". Were I to suggest, for example, that I was in favour of slavery, I am sure many colleagues would disagree with me. I could appeal to the logical part of their keen scientific brains and point out that in our human history, slavery has been clearly recorded for thousands of years, and in the UK, has only actually been illegal since 1833, a mere 178 years - a tiny fraction of human history. I would hope that they therefore could quite rationally accept the views of any of their medical colleagues who might wish to march in favour of changing the law in order to allow them to keep a slave or two around the house. I could equally accept some colleagues wishing to march in favour of keeping the practice abolished. I am all in favour of democracy and for doctors to get involved in any cause they feel passionately about, after all surely everyone is entitled to march and make their opinion known? Yet I fear that should some similar specious argument of "obigations to mankind" be accepted, then I would begin to worry for the doctors, who in their spare time and with no reference to their day jobs, had been photographed in the "Bring back Slavery" march. I could easily foresee a situation developing, following a lengthy debate over what was best for mankind, where every doctor might then be either obliged to oppose slavery or else be formally viewed as unfit to be a doctor by their peers should they disagree. Such non-clinical issues could easily then be used as an accepted measure for fitness for clinical practice. The danger inherent in such ideals is that they can all too easily become an argument for a political correctness, to later be enforced by fear and threat and at risk of hijack by a vocal few to allow them to dictate on non-clinical matters. As doctors we should attend to our patients, not attempt to create a world in our own image and set a professional standard for what we should all believe to be right or wrong. Obligations to mankind suggest that a duty exists to get involved in politics and wider social issues and that a clear and unequivocal answer exists for complex social issues. I would strongly argue that no duty should ever exist for a doctor to side in a defined way on non-clinical matters lest it become potentially devisive to the profession. Let each have their own view out of work hours by all means, but it should never become a professional obligation to meddle in matters of the world. We are neither tribal leaders nor shamens and should not delude ourselves that by treating our patients we somehow gain some right of determination over other adults' lives. I make no apology for my use of slavery as an example. It should, of course, professionally be a subject close to all our hearts, for Hippocrates of Kos himself mentions this practice in our beloved oath, a pasage of which it is now my pleasure to remind you of. "In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves". After this acknowledgement of the practice, he offers no further opinion of its rights or wrongs and makes no suggestions for "what should be done next". In my view, this is very wise. |
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