Ultimate Violence: The Accelerating Death Spiral

‘What Can We Do?’

People may speak of Israel or Palestine, Ukraine or Russia, Republican or Democrat, but a medical professional’s viewpoint is different.  A medical perspective has nothing to do with nationalities, factions, or political parties.  It is concerned with the preservation of human life and, ultimately, the survival of the species.  My quarter-century career in violence prevention and harm reduction has concerned this, and the issues today are unchanged from when I started.

Unless there is an absolute limitation of food, water, shelter, or environment, any shortage is human-induced, and avoidable.  Unless there is a physical pathogen—and even so—the true cause is often psychological.  We live in a day when even pandemics are a choice: it is we who have chosen to dismantle established pandemic response systems, to deplete working preventive agencies, and to deny rather than to defend ourselves through available knowledge and science.  Now, civilian targeting is no longer taboo, and humanitarian aid can be withheld without compunction.  It is we who choose, and the choice of needless and senseless death seems, indeed, nonsensical.

After all the bloodshed of recent days, my dear readers, my hope is that the world will come to understand this physician’s point of view.  A medical doctor is accustomed to the battlefield of health and disease.  We see many deaths, and learning to appreciate the preciousness of life is a kind of rite of passage for healers.  We perceive beauty in health, no matter the ideology, the nationality, or the stage of growth in this continuous evolution of the human species—which, once you see it, the awe of it will “erase” any lesser notion.

We have truly, finally, arrived at the point of One World or None.