Against the dying of the light : medicine’s quiet resistance

Abstract

The world groans under the weight of war. From the ruins of Gaza to the shelled hospitals of Ukraine, from the famine-stricken clinics of Yemen to the tense standoff over the South China Sea, the twenty-first century, far from fulfilling its promise of peace and progress, has revealed a darker truth. This is the century wherein precision-guided missiles fly faster than ambulances, where cities crumble while laboratories strive to build miracles of healing, and where the medical oath to preserve life is tested by the organised machinery of death. The juxtaposition is grotesque: as one hand reaches for the scalpel, the other reaches for the trigger. And in the middle of this violence we, the medical profession, must not take sides, but remain steadfast, and stubbornly humane.