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“When Medicine Starts to Look Like War…”
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“When Medicine Starts to Look Like War…”
I loved MAS*H growing up.
The doctors who refused to simply follow orders, saving lives under immense pressure and, to me, represented the very best of what a doctor could be.
In his latest Brownstone article, Dr. Varon talks about how medicine and war have always been intertwined. The pressures of war force medicine to evolve rapidly, with lives hanging in the balance. There’s no time for long testing cycles — and much of modern medicine, particularly trauma care, owes a great deal to lessons learned on the battlefield.
But war has also shown a darker side of medicine. There have been times when doctors became complicit — experimenting on prisoners of war or those deemed the “enemy.” These actions were not isolated; they were carried out by large parts of the medical establishment and sanctioned by the state, ultimately leading to the creation of the Nuremberg Code.
And it would be a mistake, he argues, to see these as purely historical events — pointing to the Tuskegee Study in the USA, which continued until 1972.
In these examples, we see how medicine can become an instrument of power. Hospitals can begin to feel like war zones, with doctors positioned as soldiers — and patients, seen as adversaries.
When I look at everything that has happened, and continues to happen I think this is a powerful analogy.
What do you think?
Read the full Brownstone article here:
https://brownstone.org/articles/when-war-teaches-medicine/
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