Reply #31: Hippocratic Oath [View All]

[SoDesuKa]

Doctors are not factory workers who can safely ignore the political context of their actions, whether as individuals or collectively as members of a professional group. APA's refusal to address the life struggles certain classes of returning soldiers leaves these individuals to cope on their own. These are real people, not abstractions.

The war in Iraq is wrong, and the soldiers who fight in it know the harm they do. Doctors who attribute these soldiers' guilty feelings to a disorder are not being "objective" - they are making themselves comfortable at the expense of people experiencing tremendous pain. These doctors are violating the Hippocratic Oath.

Jeffrey Lucey's father came home from work June 22 to find the TV on, his son's Iraqi dog tags on the bed and the cellar door open. He walked the 10 steps down to the cellar, and saw a small semi-circle of picture frames on the ground photographs of Lucey and his Marine unit flanked by pictures of his girlfriend and his family. The glass in one of the frames was broken, and his mother later found the shards on the floor of her son's room next to the blood stains.

Kevin Lucey took another step and saw his son's feet hanging two inches above the ground. He doesn't remember if he screamed -- he wanted to act quickly. He lifted his 165-pound son, took the noose off his neck, and made a small pillow out of the rug on the floor.

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