this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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If you become a medical profession, do your job. End of story. Leave your personal crap at the door or get a new job.
If u become a soldier do ur job leave ur personal crap at the door or get a new job. U just justified the actions of the Nazis "I'm just following orders".
You do see how your example is very different, right? Right?
If a soldier doesn't want to commit atrocities, they have a choice. Dishonorable discharge? Better than murder.
If a doctor doesn't want to do certain operations, they have a choice. Get a new profession.
There's always choice.
My argument is that you should have said choice. I simply think you should be allowed to make said choice without retribution. If completely leaving the profession is the only other option then all soldiers will be war criminals and all doctors will be without personal morality.
A soldier's job includes disobeying illegal orders. That's the law. Try again.
Prior to the Nuremberg trials individual responsibility for disobeying unlawful orders was an implicit judgement and not explicitly stated.
And if we look at examples of people using the defence of I was disobeying orders due to them being in violation of international law they got arrested and locked up for the rest of their life (see David McBride).
It's good to know that we have advanced as a society. We're talking about now, not 80 years ago.
You also seem to be under the impression that making a "correct" choice would be without consequences. It would be nice if the moral or legal choice always had positive consequences for the chooser, but that's not always the case. That doesn't chance the morality or legality of the choice. Yes, soldiers have been persecuted for disobeying an illegal order; either legally or socially; but that doesn't change their duty.
(Also, David McBride was arrested for releasing confidential documents, something that is very much illegal. We can debate the morality, but that's not relevant here because it's not remotely related to a soldier refusing to follow illegal orders.)
A soldier following an illegal order may lead to people dying unnecessarily, so they are duty bound to not follow illegal orders. A doctor choosing to not treat patients because they don't like something about them may lead to people dying unnecessarily, so they are duty bound to treat all patients.
A doctor's agency does not supersede another's right to live. A doctor doesn't get to choose who lives or dies; and yes, even requiring that the doctor refer the patient to a different doctor would result in people dying.
I mean they didn't. "Do your job or do something else" and "I'm just following orders" are worlds apart.
One is expressing the opinion that if a person freely chooses a profession but then refuses to practice it for asinine reasons they should choose a different profession because they are incapable of doing the job correctly.
The other is an excuse Nazi's used to justify the shit they did.
Not the same.
The real problem here is that allowing medical professionals to pick and choose like you describe based on their personal values will lead to people dying. That's the entire reason for the Hippocratic oath, to provide an unbiased framework of ethics under which physicians practice.
Hypothetically, say you're straight, have a one night stand with your preferred gender and get AIDS. You feel sick go to a doctor and they refuse to treat you because AIDS is the "gay" disease and since you have AIDS, you must be gay and this Doctor doesn't "agree with that lifestyle." So you ask for one who does, turns out you're in a Catholic hospital and no one "agrees with that lifestyle" here. Sorry, you're fucked and maybe have to drive a few hours for treatment now because of some judgmental assholes. Or you die from AIDS because you live in America, in a red state, where you have no other options.
That phrase btw? The one about lifestyles? That's a fucking dog whistle.
They are both an appeal to a moral framework higher than themselves.
If I'm a bricklayer I can refuse services for any asinine reason I want that's just liberty, personal autonomy, and free will. Why is any other progression any different.
Yep an excuse of I could not refuse "service" because I was told I had to because i had no liberty to do otherwise. The service of medics is healthcare the service of a soldier is death.
The parallels similar enough to raise real concerns.
Which Hippocratic oath? Cos the original forbids prescribing death, allowing abortion, or c sections, it also says "". The newer one "" still says "". And the only one that does not is the "" which is the only one with explicit statements of neutrality but doesn't really provide much ethical framework beyond that. And yeah people die every day should I be forced to donate all my money to stop that? U have internet and a phone that decision has killed a countable number of people that you could have prevented.
If its a government hospital they cannot refuse service for that reason and must find someone willing to service you because the state services are bound by anti discrimination laws. An individual should have the right to refuse to service an individual if servicing them is against their religion etc. Its the equivalent of forcing a Muslim chef to make pork because if they refuse it could cause harm to the person who wants to eat pork.
The term dog whistle has been so overused to the point it just means something said by people I disagree with. Language is an ever changing thing its simply a set of sounds with an agreed upon meaning. People then attempt to prevent people from conveying particular meaning they do this by restricting the sounds that convey this meaning. So people come up with a new set of sounds that mean they same thing. Hence u have a dig whistle. Winnie the pooh is a dog whistle for fuck Xi Jinping because the CCP banned the original words that means that. A dog whistle is what u get when u censor and silence opinions. A dog whistle is not inherently a bad thing its simply an adaptation to censorship.
To be fair, if you don't want to follow orders without question, you will find being a foot soldier particularly unpleasant.
But your moral equivalence between following orders to kill without question and saving lives and healing people without question is utterly bogus and broken.
I swapped the word for one profession with the word of another. In ancient Greek the word technē often used in philosophical discussion such as this was used for both interchangeably.
Why is it utterly bogus and broken. Ur opinion does not negate mine lest u have an argument to back your claim.
If you can find no moral distinction between being contractually obliged to help someone get well and being contractually obliged to kill people, then I think that not just your logic is broken, but your morals and your humanity. You equated opposites.