Saddam's Surgeons: First, Do Harm

Washington Post ^ | 06/08/03 | Maryam Elahi and Adam Kushner

[Pokey78]

For most people, it's unimaginable to think of physicians assuming the role of torturers and executioners. Yet under Saddam Hussein this is what took place. Whether the complicity was forced or voluntary, physicians participated for years in the state's apparatus of cruelty and terror. As researchers for Physicians for Human Rights in Iraq, we spoke to many doctors who reported on complicity in these heinous acts. The state wanted them to have "dirty hands," said one senior surgeon, who told us that they acted on a government mandate ordering all surgeons to participate in cutting off the ears and branding the foreheads of army deserters. In one hospital, all surgeons -- general, orthopedic, plastic, cardiac and neurosurgeons -- were reportedly required to perform the mutilation.

[ConservativeMan55]

And this is what the Demonrats were accomplice to? They should be thrown in jail for treason!

[Diogenesis]

Perhaps they want to introduce it here.
Perhaps the EU will use it in the UK for children whose swings are too high.

[Free_at_last_-2001]

Hippocratic Oath -- Classical Version

I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfil according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:

To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art - if they desire to learn it - without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else.

I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.

Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.

What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.

If I fulfil this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.

[bannie]

That is horrific.

Nausiating.

Caligula-ian, with the hospitals full of "Praetorian guards"

[Ronly Bonly Jones]

We're not entirely clean hands here either.

There's a strong movement to require doctors to learn -- AND PERFORM -- abortions in medical school. In combination with the well documented fascist discriminated against prolife individuals who want to get INTO medical school, this means that the AMA advocates the equivalent.

But of course, this involves the "right" to "choice." As in the "right" of the doctor to "choose" to accept $500 for killing a baby. And for forcing all other doctors to have "dirty hands" as well. Whoever came up with this policy is a pure, gibbering Nazi.

[willyboyishere]

The Third Reich got a new lease on life under Saddam.

[Tripleplay]

Why didn't Sean Penn observe these atrocities when touring the hospitals?

[solzhenitsyn]

Thanks, Pokey. I'm so proud that my country and its allies put an end to this.

[ConservativeMan55]

He did observe them, but he blamed them on the United States sanctions.

[ConservativeMan55]

I don't understand what you are saying.

[Paleo Conservative]

The state wanted them to have "dirty hands," said one senior surgeon, who told us that they acted on a government mandate ordering all surgeons to participate in cutting off the ears and branding the foreheads of army deserters. In one hospital, all surgeons -- general, orthopedic, plastic, cardiac and neurosurgeons -- were reportedly required to perform the mutilation.

Don't you just love socialized medicine?

[bannie]

Those aren't MY hands...amd I am not silent.

[Paleo Conservative]

'Perhaps the EU will use it in the UK for children whose swings are too high.'

I don't understand what you are saying.

Just a recent example of the idiocy of EU bureaucrats and their imposition of socialism.

EU give swings the push ("Balmy" regulations on playgrounds)

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Physicians for Human Rights in Iraq, we spoke to many doctors who reported on complicity in these heinous acts.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but how long did these doctors know? If they knew, why didn't they support US before, during and after the war? How could so many of these so-called "human rights" NGOs know about Saddam's atrocities and remain silent - or worse, accuse US of intentionally harming Iraqi civilians?

Something's fishy with these groups. Easson Jordan-ish ambition or ANSWER-type complicity? Fear? Why then not support our awesome military as we do the tough job of liberating Iraq?

***Operation Infinite Freedom - Situation Room - 7 JUN 03/Day 80*** ^

[Yaron]

Probably because it's a load of bollocks

[donmeaker]

It is also important to remember that doctors have often been taught a statist, or even racist view of "harm".

German doctors killed the retarded, those inflicted with mental illness, polio, victims of car accidents, and even wounded veterans both before the Nazis and after the Nazis. That mindset provided the philosophical underpinning for the death camps, and for treating homosexuals, gypsies, dissidents, and jews as "untermench" fit only to be killed.

In Germany, FDR would have been put down for being crippled. In the US we elected him President.

[bonesmccoy]

Reminds me of the "achtung" doctors in most HMO medical groups.

[bonesmccoy]

MSG to Planned Parenthood:
"I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy"

[Yaron]

I reckon it's bollocks, because you don't need a doctor to cut someone's ears off. Infact a doctor is likely to do it less painfully and with better instruments. Why would you bother. Just doesn't ring true.