Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Steven H. Miles on the New Military Medicine

An important look at military medicine by Steven H. Miles
THE NEW MILITARY MEDICAL ETHICS: LEGACIES OF THE GULF WARS AND THE WAR ON TERROR
ABSTRACT


United States military medical ethics evolved during its involvement in two recent wars, Gulf War I (1990–1991) and the War on Terror (2001–). Norms of conduct for military clinicians with regard to the treatment of prisoners of war and the administration of non-therapeutic bioactive agents to soldiers were set aside because of the sense of being in a ‘new kind of war’. Concurrently, the use of radioactive metal in weaponry and the ability to measure the health consequences of trade embargos on vulnerable civilians occasioned new concerns about the health effects of war on soldiers, their offspring, and civilians living on battlefields. Civilian medical societies and medical ethicists fitfully engaged the evolving nature of the medical ethics issues and policy changes during these wars.


Read the full report here.

1 comment:

George Patsourakos said...

Many veterans from the Gulf War in Iraq and the War on Terror have developed incurable mysterious illnesses that the U.S. government does not want to talk about -- and even denies this problem.

It appears that Iraqis used poisonous gases against Americans in the Gulf War, causing hundreds -- if not thousands -- of Americans to contact life-long illnesses. Apparently, the U.S. government does not want to admit that this was the case, because it would then be required to compensate all of these permanently-ill veterans with millions of dollars.