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The Role of Ahiṁsā in Healthcare Ethics : 61
tified reality with Truth (satya), which prompted Gandhi to expand ahiṁsā in such a novel way that it served not only the cause of morality but also of politics. By this strategy he was able to forge a unity of politics and religion. What Gandhi did for politics this essay attempts to do for medicine, namely, to demonstrate how the moral principle of ahimsā can also serve as a medical principle. 2. Ahimsā in Healthcare Ethics
1. The first use of the maxim, “Do no harm," is to establish the healing arts as a moral undertaking. In the myth of the origin of Ayurveda, it is stated that when there was an outbreak of disease, sages “out of sympathy for creatures" convened a meeting on one of the "auspicious sides of the Himalayas." All agreed that health was "the best source of virtue, wealth, gratification, and emancipation," and that "diseases are destroyers” of these means of welfare, and of life itself.25 Brahmā himself bequeathed the secret of longevity which was passed on to humans. The moral of the myth is that gods are models of the type of empathy humans should have for one another; that health and happiness are part of the natural order; that the quest for health is a moral obligation; that the Veda of Ayus, which is the conjunction of body, sense organs, mind and self," is "the most virtuous" because it attends to human needs for both here and the hereafter. Further, medicine is moral because it focuses on the patient as a person. In Western circles, this point is best articulated by Paul Ramsey. He states:
The problem of medical ethics that are especially urgent in the present day...are by no means technical problem on which only the expert...can have an opinion. They are rather the problems of human beings in situations in which medical care is needed. Birth and death, illness and injury are not simply events the doctor attends. They are moments in every human life. The doctor makes decisions as an expert but also as a man among men; and his patient is a human being coming to his birth or to his death, or being rescued from illness or injury in between. Therefore, the doctor
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