"What are scientists, clinicians, and public health practitioners supposed to do in this moment? What use is research when our patients might be deported tomorrow? Why try to stem the tide of outbreaks when the world has fallen apart? This is why: because even in these times, enlarging the scope of human knowledge matters. The search for cures still matters. The fate of individual patients still matters."
"Doing our work and keeping our heads down isn't a victory, and it is not resistance. Our position in the 'zone of interest' may keep some of us away from direct contact with the terror outside, but we can hear the screams and cries now of those affected, beamed to us through our phones, our televisions, and the radio as we drive to work. We cannot say we do not know what is happening."
"All of this is thanks to a regime devoted to a twisted version of Christianity, to rank racism, misogyny, homophobia, sheer greed, and a lavish taste for cruelty for its own sake. People are being killed, disappeared from our streets, whisked away to foreign shores, or held in crowded, filthy, inhumane detention centers."
In times of severe political oppression characterized by violence, disappearances, detention, and widespread fear, professionals in science, medicine, and public health face a moral imperative beyond their standard work. While research, patient care, and disease containment remain important, these efforts alone constitute insufficient resistance to authoritarian regimes built on racism, misogyny, homophobia, and cruelty. Professionals cannot justify silence or detachment by claiming ignorance of atrocities occurring around them. Maintaining professional responsibilities while keeping quiet represents complicity rather than resistance. The position of relative safety in academic institutions does not exempt professionals from moral obligation to actively oppose systemic injustices and support those directly affected by state violence and terror.
#professional-responsibility-and-activism #authoritarian-oppression-and-resistance #moral-complicity-and-silence #healthcare-and-science-ethics
Read at The Nation
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