[Download] "Medicalized Weapons & Modern War." by The Hastings Center Report * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Medicalized Weapons & Modern War.
- Author : The Hastings Center Report
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Life Sciences,Books,Science & Nature,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 184 KB
Description
Asymmetric warfare is creating a new frontier for bioethics as military organizations rush to develop nonlethal, medicalized weapons. Faced with small but increasingly sophisticated guerrilla organizations that intermingle at will with the civilian population, the United States and many of its allies are searching for ways to disable insurgents while minimizing harm to civilians. One avenue is to build increasingly sophisticated "precision-guided munitions"--"smart," high-explosive bombs that, in theory, zero in on and destroy their targets without widespread collateral damage. However, these weapons--the purview of electronics and ballistic experts--can only go so far. Very often, there are no clearly defined guerrilla targets, or, as often happens, the targets are destroyed early on. Nonlethal weapons are an increasingly attractive option for rooting out insurgents without bringing catastrophic harm to civilians. Rather than disabling or killing enemy forces by causing traumatic injury, nonlethal weapons temporarily incapacitate their targets by causing physical distress, disorientation, or unconsciousness. These weapons are "medicalized" in that they rely on advances in neuroscience, physiology, and pharmacology and on the active participation of physicians and other medical workers. Not since international law prohibited the development and use of biological and chemical weapons (in 1972 and 1993, respectively) have medical personnel been so directly involved with the design, manufacture, and testing of a weapon. But medicalized weapons place medical practitioners in a bind. Ordinarily trained to relieve pain and suffering, they now face calls to help build weapons that cause some measure of harm, even if nonlethal and transient. Do the principles of medical ethics--particularly the axiom "do no harm"--permit medical personnel to build nonlethal weapons?