Between The Lines: The Numb in Numbers
Iowa Alumni Magazine editor in chief Carol Harker reflects on the statistics of war.

Fighting Words
A book of poetry--yes, poetry--published by the UI Press spawns accusations of un-American behavior.

Ethics Under Fire
Historically, ethics change in wartime, when soldiers have been used as "guinea pigs for experimental drugs" and other treatments.

When people accuse Maureen McCue of being naive in her criticism of war, she likes to quote tough-as-nails former U.S. President and General Dwight D. Eisenhower right back at them: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of scientists, the hope of its children."

The general's quote set the tone for a conference, sponsored by the Physicians for Social Responsibility organization, and the UI Carver College of Medicine, College of Public Health, and Center for Human Rights, that McCue helped organize in Iowa City this past March.

Some 150 physicians, nurses, social workers, and medical students attended "Medical Consequences of War: Health Challenges Beyond the Battlefield," which explored war's physical, psychological, social, and economic impact on veterans, civilians, medical personnel, and entire nations.

McCue, a physician and an adjunct instructor with the UI International Programs' Global Health Studies Program, points out that any technological medical advances from war tend to influence the health of a relatively small number of people. In contrast, the public health measures and medical infrastructures that affect entire populations—clean air, safe water, hospitals, medical personnel, and training for those staff—tend to be devastated during conflicts.

"To pretend medicine is making advances through war is like asking how many people you have to kill to do it. There are far safer and more ethical ways to make advances," says McCue, 97PhD. "Plus, all the intensive care units in the world won't make up for the lack of primary health care or public health."

She cites War Hospital, an award-winning book that covered the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s. "The doctors interviewed say they thought they learned from war, but that, in reality, what they saw was some of the worst fly-by-night, seat-of-your-pants kind of medicine," she says. "They were forced to try different, extreme techniques that a peaceful, less stressed environment wouldn't encourage."

With Bosnian healthcare facilities destroyed and many senior physicians killed, young, inexperienced doctors struggled to cope—much like young civilian physicians currently operating in Iraq. In the meantime, people died without access to good health care.
That's McCue's point. "A society's entire infrastructure has to be rebuilt from the ground up after war," she says. "What you gain from war is far less than what you lose."

Learn More Online...
	Medical Advances		Matching Game: War Quotes
	Ethics Under Fire		Multiple Choice: War & Medicine
	The Numb In Numbers