Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at NYU's medical school, is certainly very good at talking to journalists. My impression has long been that he is not well-regarded by philosophers, and not even by many fellow bioethicists. But this is really a new low:
Arthur L. Caplan, a professor of medical ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, has been campaigning for a program of mass death. He has written, not one, but two op-eds calling for a pharmaceutical boycott of Russia.
"How far does noncooperation with Russia go?" wrote Caplan on March 11 in Medscape. "Very, very far ... Whatever can be done to minimize harm to existing subjects in a short period of time ought to be done, but that is it. Similarly, no sale of medicines or therapies ought to be occurring, be they life-saving or consumer products." (Emphases mine.)
"The Russian people need to be pinched not only by the loss of cheeseburgers and boutique coffee but by products they use to maintain their well-being," Caplan lightheartedly adds.
The targeting of civilians is a relatively new form of barbarity in the history of war.
Caplan is untroubled by the implications of his proposal. "War is cruel that way," he shrugs, "but if you tolerate a government that is bombing and shelling a peaceful neighbor to oblivion, then pharma must ensure that efforts to make Putin and his kleptocratic goons feel the wrath of their fellow citizens."
In America the Vengeful, even the philosophers of health can preach death....
Caplan wants drug companies to take steps that result in civilian deaths—in a country that has already experienced 17,376,241 infections and 745,210 deaths from Covid-19.
His argument is based on two contradictory premises: that Vladimir Putin is a dictator, and that the Russian people must be punished for his actions. But if Russia is not a functioning democracy, how can its people be held morally accountable for their government's actions? The call to inflict pain and death upon Russian civilians is as illogical as it is monstrous.
It is also a war crime.
As any qualified ethicist should know, targeting civilians during a military conflict is a war crime. The Geneva Conventions (Additional Protocol I) are clear on the subject:
The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence, the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population, are prohibited.
Similarly, Common Article 3 of the Conventions prohibits "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture" when perpetrated against persons "taking no active part in the hostilities."
And Article 48 of Protocol I calls on parties in conflict to "at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants" and "direct their operations only against military objectives."
(Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.)
ADDENDUM: Just to be clear, I don't think withholding pharmaceuticals would constitute a literal "war crime" (that's rhetorical hyperbole), but it's still grotesque for all the other reasons noted.
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