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Dual Loyalty among Military Health Professionals: Human Rights and Ethics in Times of Armed Conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2006

LESLIE LONDON ,
LEONARD S. RUBENSTEIN ,
LAUREL BALDWIN-RAGAVEN  and
ADRIAAN VAN ES
LESLIE LONDON
Affiliation:
School of Public Health and Family Medicine at the University of Cape Town, South Africa
LEONARD S. RUBENSTEIN
Affiliation:
Physicians for Human Rights (USA), and the Human Rights Committee of the American Public Health Association
LAUREL BALDWIN-RAGAVEN
Affiliation:
Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, the Human Rights Division at the University of Cape Town, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility
ADRIAAN VAN ES
Affiliation:
International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organization (IFHHRO)
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Extract

Point:

Wars must be won if our country … is to be protected from unthinkable outcomes, as the events on September 11th most recently illustrated…. This best protection unequivocally requires armed forces having military physicians committed to doing what is required to secure victory…. As opposed to needing neutral physicians, we need military physicians who can and do identify as closely as possible with the military so that they, too, can carry out the vital part they play in meeting the needs of the mission.

Counterpoint:

We believe the role of the “physician–soldier” to be an inherent moral impossibility because the military physician, in an environment of military control, is faced with the difficult problems of mixed agency that include obligations to the “fighting strength” and … “national security.”This paper is based on the Dual Loyalty Project (1998–2000), which was funded by the Greenwall Foundation to develop guidelines that protect the human rights of patients in situations where health professionals face dual loyalty conflicts. The intellectual contributions of the International Dual Loyalty Working Group, as well as the assistance of Ms. Kathy Mallinson and Dr. Joanne Stevens in preparing this manuscript are gratefully acknowledged.

Type
SPECIAL SECTION: BIOETHICS AND WAR
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 2006 , pp. 381 - 391
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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