Tulsi Prajna 1995 10

SR No.: 524585
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Parmeshwar Solanki
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati
Publication Year: 1995
Total Pages: 174
Language: Hindi
Classification: Magazine, India_Tulsi Prajna, & India
File Size: 7 MB

Page 164

NON-VIOLENCE IN MEDICAL SCIENCE
Anil K Dhar
It has been stated by TERRA* reportthat if we will do experi. ments and research on the human beings in the same ratio as we are doing with innocent creature, the human existance will last only for four years. Means that modern science is claiming more than 15 B. innocent lives every year.
No one in the world today having the slightest acquaintance with the nature of medical science can doubt that it is permeated with violence. Perhaps this sound strange to those outside the profession. The goal of medical science, after all, is to relieve people of pain and suffering and to reduce the sum total of human misery. What could be violent about this ? But violence, of course, always passes for something else. It is so sinister that medical science and scientists are generally overlooking it.
It can be argued that modern scientific medicine is so vastly complicated that Violence is simply unavoidable. Surely we must expect things go wrong when nature and diseases of mankind are so complex Antinature tendencies and living style has gifted mankind a series of complex diseases. Now, we have to ponder what principle makes a pious profession like medical to adopt unethical violentic approaches. To me it seems that the principle of Hierarchy of life is one of the main reason behind this. Have the 'higher' forms of life higher valae ?
It is a common belief that the higher forms of life have a higher value, and that the lower forms of life may be wilfully sacrified in the interest of the more developed forms of life. An extreme example of the western view of life as representing a hierarchy is Kant's? belief that natural objects which are non-rational have only a relative instrumental value and are consequently called things. This value gap between rational beings, called persons, and non-rational creatures is given a different significance in Indian thought.
However the hierarchy of life is still recognised. The BhagavataPurana gives a full account of the hierarchy of living beings : animate (Jiva) beings are better than inanimate beings (Ajiva); breathing creatures (Pranavata) are best among the animates ones. Among breathing beings those who posses a mind are the best. Among those