“Torture” It Can Never Be Ok!

Torture is the act of inflicting excluciating pain as a punishment, or revenge, or as a way of getting confession, or information, or for sheer cruelty! Looking at the above definition there are two parts to torture; an action that is done and the expected outcome, but the question is; is it justifiable? Are there instances where torture is ok. What about in medicine does torture exist?

Personally I view torture as cruelty and believe that torture has no place in humanity and worse still in medicine regardless of the outcome of torture. As human beigns I believe that our brains are not more developed than other mammals for nothing but because we have the ability to critically analyze things and consider other options. I am sure that there are always other means of getting an outcome for example information from a person than torture.

Maybe there are other instances where torture may be permissible, I am not sure. Once my friend told me that never say I can never kill a man until when you are in a situation, and he proceeded by giving me an example of what happened in Rwanda during the genocide that just imagine you watch someone killing your whole familly brutally and you have recognized the face, what would you do to that person if you had a chance to revenge? Torture breeds violence according to Williams, the victims of torture are more prone to violence and possibly may opt to options of torture themselves(http://bjp.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/04/08/2049463713483596). Having said this I believe a healthy human beign would not torture another beign.

If I briefly go back to last weeks topic abot equality I believe the other thing that justifies torture is when you believe that the value of this human beign is less than the other or that they deserve what thay are getting, for example in 2004 there was a dry spell in Malawi and there were no rains. Many elderly people were tortured or even stoned to death in the community because people believed that they were responsible for the dry spell.(were practicing witch craft to prevent the rain from coming) This is cruelty but the thinking was lets rid the community of one witch and save the entire community.

If we could count any life to be precious just like the next person we would not be talking about torture. Be it an 80 years old man or a 2 years old boy they are all human beigns and they are special in their own ways and deserve the best treatment our resources could afford. Who says a 2 years old has a full life a head of him so he should get priority? Who knows what will happen to him in ten years down the line?  What if he becomes a robber and kill people or might as well live to be a president? An eye for an eye will result in a blind world because we all have done wrong at some point in our lives.