LOS MARGINADOS: Redefining the rules of war

sábado, 7 de noviembre de 2015

Redefining the rules of war

Redefining the rules of war

by Xavier Symons | 7 Nov 2015 |

Fires burn in part of the MSF hospital after air strike on October 3 (AFP: MSF)

Medecins San Frontieres has accused the US special forces of “war crimes” after an American AC-130 gunship attacked a field hospital in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz in early October.

According to MSF, the incident left at least 30 staff and patients dead. During the one hour attack, “patients burned in their beds, medical staff were decapitated and lost limbs, and others were shot by the circling AC-130 gunship while fleeing the burning building”.

MSF staff frantically try to contact NATO during the attack, but the response was slow. The US government later apologised, but MSF are not satisfied and is demanding a full investigation.

MSF believes that the attack may have been deliberate, and have called on the nations of the world to declare “if the rules of war still apply”: “We need a clear commitment that the act of providing medical care will never make us a target.”

In an opinion piece in Newsweek, MSF UK executive director Vickie Hawkins further emphasised the seriousness of the situation. Discussing a litany of attacks in the past two years, she asked,

“What are medical workers from Afghanistan to Syria, Yemen and beyond to do if their protection is stripped from them? What does it mean for patients if their ability to access medical care is destroyed?”

- See more at: http://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/redefining-the-rules-of-war/11645#sthash.VEB7PgNZ.dpuf

Bioedge

BioEdge: the latest news and articles about bioethics

We missed this, sorry, but October 21 was #BackToTheFutureDay, the day Marty McFly travelled to in Back to the Future II. The internet was abuzz with the kind of stuff the internet buzzes about better than anyone else and even POTUS tweeted “Ever think about the fact that we live in the future we dreamed of then? That's heavy, man.”

But with all the palaver about time travel, the only person who studied the bioethical conundrums of time travel was Dr Janet D. Stemwedel, a columnist for Forbes who specialises in time machine ethics. She took seriously a question posed on Twitter by the New York Times Magazine: “If you could go back and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it?” (Only 42% said yes!)

First of all, she notes that this is question that only a utilitarian will take seriously. Killing an innocent child now is deemed right because it will prevent great evils later. But she counters: “Given all the moving parts in a world of many people who raised, nurtured, enabled, and assisted Adolf Hitler, why is baby Hitler the moving part to eliminate? If you gamble on killing this baby, who has done nothing wrong and for whom there is no guarantee yet of eventually committing the horrors you hope to prevent, aren’t you using the kind of logic that could justify mass exterminations of other people?"

Furthermore, given the large number of people who shared Hitler’s depraved ideas, someone else would probably step into the gap left by his non-existence. She concludes: “In the process of trying to avoid a great harm that, at the stage of Hitler’s infancy, is in no way inevitable, you’ve made yourself a baby killer, which is surely a harm to baby Hitler, to his survivors, and (if you have any kind of conscience) to you.”

Sound advice, readers, if you ever get your hands on a reliable time machine.

Michael Cook
Editor
BioEdge

This week in BioEdge

Redefining the rules of war

by Xavier Symons | Nov 07, 2015

Medecins San Frontieres has accused the US special forces of “war crimes” after an American AC-130 gunship attacked a field hospital in the northern Afghan…

Delusional but autonomous

by Michael Cook | Nov 07, 2015

A British man chooses to die rather than lose his leg.

Surrogacy business shifts to Cambodia

by Michael Cook | Nov 07, 2015

The international market for surrogacy is proving to be very resilient in the face of legal and social disruption

India restricts access to surrogate mothers

by Xavier Symons | Nov 07, 2015

The Indian government has introduced strict new laws that will prohibit foreigners from commissioning Indian women to bear their children.

Silicon Valley becomes a bioethical testing ground

by Michael Cook | Nov 07, 2015

Internet giants move into medical research.