The images from Ukraine are beyond endurance. There is nothing to say about the ethics of this conflict. A fascist autocrat who leads a confederacy of kleptocrats decides to invade a neighboring state under a KGB-honed delusion that has been out of date since the 1990s so that his nation will be “stronger” by reattaching itself to a the blasted remains of a cultural treasure.
No one but a few admirers of the monomaniacal racist—Bannon, Trump, Carlson, Taylor-Greene, and their putrid ilk—has anything but contempt for his crackpot rationales for this Anschluss. Putin’s excuses vary from avenging terrorism against ethnic Russians, for which there is no evidence, to (I am not making this up) the “denazification” of Ukraine, a nation with a Jewish Ukrainian president, while intentionally bombing Ukraiine’s sacred site of Nazi genocide, Babi Yar. In my lifetime, there has never been a more unjust, unwarranted, and demented invasion of another nation than what Putin has done to Ukraine.
The only moral question facing scientists and doctors is what they can do to support the freedom-loving people of Ukraine. Let me suggest a number of actions:
- Urge vaccines, masks, and medicines to battle infectious diseases be among the supplies sent to aid Ukraine and nations accepting refugees from there. COVID-19, measles, cholera, and even polio may add to Putin’s war and ravage Ukraine and its most vulnerable citizens.
- Give aid to surveil the health of refugees and those caring for them.
- Boycott all meetings with Russian sponsorship or participation or with Russian allies who will not try to bring the unjust invasion to an end.
- Ending all training for Russian students and faculty—of course, excluding those who are outside Russia as a result of exile or threat.
- No publication of any medical or scientific work from or by Russians.
- No sponsorship or participation in any research in or with Russia.
- Write to condemn the racist, false history Putin cites to justify the absorption of Ukraine into Russia and similar claims about other nearby nations.
- No meetings or retreats at locations run by Putin and his cronies.
These are tough, painful measures that may well impact innocent, peace-loving Russians. It is unfortunate but not unfair. We must be at war with Putin, and since this is a war of finance and isolation, science and medicine ought to play their part. Until he reverses course—or, better yet, resigns under pressure—the world, including the world of biomedicine, must make Russia a pariah. There is no pleasure in that, but there is justice.
