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The Nature of Peace and the Morality of Armed Conflict pp 293–321Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Medical Care During War: A Remainder and Prospect of Peace

Abstract

Ideally, the (ethical) principles of medical care remain unaltered during armed conflict and can be interpreted as a remnant of peace during war. Healthcare providers also support future peace by not discriminating according to the conflict roles between enemy and friend or fighter and civilian, but by respecting everybody, in a non-conflict logic, as human beings. The antithetical view identifies medical care for wounded soldiers as a contribution to a threat. This chapter rejects such an interpretation, which can be found in parts of the revisionist just war theory, because it carelessly ignores the non-conflict logic, which is fundamental to the medical role. The aim of this chapter is twofold: (i) to show that and for which reasons medical care should not count as a contribution to a threat and (ii) to point out how medical care should be conceived in order to implement and defend its inherent peace-logic.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Florian Demont, Bernhard Koch, and the participants of the D-A-CH and EuroISME workshops 2016 for their constructive criticism and helpful comment, and Jack Williams who helped with proofreading.

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  1. Center for Ethics, University of Zurich, Zollikerstr 117, Zurich, 8008, Switzerland

    Daniel Messelken

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  1. Daniel Messelken
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Correspondence to Daniel Messelken .

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  1. MILAK at ETH Zurich, Aarau, Switzerland

    Florian Demont-Biaggi

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Messelken, D. (2017). Medical Care During War: A Remainder and Prospect of Peace. In: Demont-Biaggi, F. (eds) The Nature of Peace and the Morality of Armed Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57123-2_15

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