Correction: A quick internet search reveals that roughly 110,000-120,000 Japanese Americans were interred by the United States during WWII (not millions as I stated earlier). Perhaps two thirds of those were American citizens.
THE SPECTRUM
Dean Ornish M.D.
Tortured Logic
There are important reasons why the most sacred medical oaths and doctrines prohibit doctors from participating in torture in any way.
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
"The end excuses any evil."
--Sophocles, "Electra" (409 B.C.)
"No man is justified doing evil on the grounds of expediency."
--Theodore Roosevelt, "The Strenuous Life" (1900)
Last week, I was having dinner with a good friend who is an extremely bright and thoughtful person. I shared with him how shocking it is to me that our country is having a rational debate about whether or not it's permissible to torture people. "It's unfathomable to me that some people think it's morally defensible to torture people in the name of defending our freedoms," I said. "If we can't draw a bright moral line about torturing, then where can we? Torture is never the right thing to do."
"Oh, yes it is," he replied, causing me to choke on my sushi. "What if some guy abducted your beloved wife and son, had them locked up somewhere with a bomb that was rigged to explode in two hours, and the police captured him. Wouldn't you torture him to get the information you needed to save their lives?"
"I don't know what I would do," I replied, "but I'd like to believe that nothing ever justifies torture. Expediency is a slippery slope."
As the cartoon character Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Sometimes, people do the darkest acts in the name of helping protect their loved ones. Sweet and precocious young Anakin Skywalker goes to the Dark Side and becomes the evil Darth Vader in hopes of gaining enough powers to protect his beloved wife from dying in childbirth.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next Page »







