Close your eyes and you can hear it.
Life is flowing all around us. You can see it in the motion. You can hear it in the ebb and flow of activity. We are living in a human ocean.
Yet, even in this, there is danger. Every environment requires a determined effort to preserve it from threats to its existence.
In the medical profession, Doctors use skills they have acquired through years of training to heal bodies broken by disease. In the natural world, environmentally-minded people use technology to reduce the amount of pollution and waste.
Every year there are new discoveries, new ways to advance and preserve the cause of life. Consider the pacemaker, dialysis machines, or the amazing technology that enables crews to deal with the toxic aftermath of an oil spill.
The paradox is that the same ingenuity that can be used to preserve life, is also being used to build weapons, destroy forests, and pollute the water we rely on. In the same way, medical skill is being used to conduct destructive research on human embryos, to conduct abortions, and to provide euthanasia.
Consider the fact that even actions that seem small can have a significant impact on our natural environment. Acid rain, smog, and, global warming are current examples of how individual actions can combine to provide a major force for collective harm.
When life is destroyed for the benefit of science, when unwanted children are destroyed for the sake of convenience, when the sick and the elderly are euthanized without significant protest, it seems obvious that these actions will have an effect.
When some lives are deemed less worthy, or inconvenient, it affects not only the moral conscience of the medical profession, it erodes the value that society places on life.
The longer compromise is practiced, the more the way we view others changes, our priorities change, and eventually, apathy becomes normal and even acceptable.
Despite the many benefits, there is a real danger in the practice of medicine. Like the challenges facing the natural world, ethical compromises made by individuals affect every one of us.
The tragedy is that the results of ethical compromise are the same as unchecked environmental pollution.
Plug your ears, close your eyes and you can hear the ultimate effect of it.
Silence is also an inconvenient truth