Last Thursday I attended a presentation at Fordham University given by Peter Redfield about his book, Life in Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders. The presentation was open to the public but mainly consisted of Fordham students and MSF reps. Redfield centered the talk around defining the 'value of life' and what it means to MSF. He then displayed the following quote on the screen by Hannah Arendt: "For what matters today is not immortality of life, but that life is the highest good." MSF believes that 'life is the highest good' and therefore will do whatever is humanly possible to save them.
MSF was founded in 1971 as a French alternative to Red Cross. It began as an emergency oriented relief organization and has more or less stayed true to its initial statutes, with the exception of the hospital that is being built in Haiti. MSF works to save lives that are in crisis and therefore does not pick and choose which life to save based on age, social standing, genders, or defining characteristics. In the field the doctors are constantly in a state of triage where patients are treated based on their bodily state.
Redfield described MSF to be anti-utilitarian, to possess egalitarian ethos, and to have realist problems of limits. "Life is a categorical value and cannot be sacrificed for anything," said Redfield, articulating MSF's moral philosophy on saving lives.
MSF has often been criticized for being palliative. It is geared towards short term relief instead of long term development. This has to do with limited resources, both manpower and medical supplies, a focused mission centered around crisis relief, and the fact that there are other organizations whose main goal is to train the locals or build hospitals in developing countries.
This presentation was great! It taught me some basics about the company but focused on why MSF does the work that it does, which was really what I wanted to know. I hope to attend more presentations like this during the rest of my project!
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