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Pinky: I was doing some research and came across an old newspaper article, written during the Vietnam War.It's about a guy who had studied agriculture in college. His special area of study was how to help underdeveloped countries improve their crop yields. Well, fast forward a few years to 1965, and now this guy is in the U.S. Air Force using his expertise to help U.S. war planners identify which rice fields in Vietnam are the most productive ones, so that they can be bombed and destroyed with chemical warfare. The idea here, of course, was to maximize starvation and suffering among the Vietnamese, so as to give the occupying U.S. military a strategic advantage.
Reading this story made me think about medical doctors. When you become a doctor, you're asked to take an oath - the Hippocratic oath - that requires that you respect life, serve human kind with conscience and dignity, stuff like that.
It made me wonder though... wouldn't it make sense if everybody who has the privilege of studying and learning things in school - not just doctors - be asked to use the knowledge they acquire for good, and not evil? Or would that just make too many people unemployable?
<end transcript>
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Credits: Students against Rice Eaters > if you have any questions regarding permissions or terms of use.| episode number: | 060422-01 |
| release date: | April 22, 2006 |
| writing: | Pinky |
| research: | Pinky |
| bibliography: |
 |
Vietnam: A Matter of Perspective. Howard Zinn. From The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy (1997). |
| narration: | Pinky |
| video: | - |
| music: | - |
| sound effects: | - |
| drawings & illustrations: | Pinky |
| titles: | Pinky |
| other image credits: |
|
 illustration: Rice, from Kohler's Medicinal Plants (Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen in naturgetreuen Abbildungen mit kurz erläuterndem, 1887). < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Koeh-232.jpg >  photo: Red River, Vietnam. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_(Vietnam) >  photo: the caption from the Wikipedia website reads "U.S. Military planes cropdusting in Vietnam during Operation Ranch Hand, which lasted from 1962 to 1971. US Military Picture." < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Image:Agent_Orange_Cropdusting.jpg >  photo from space: Red River Delta, Vietnam. Image courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center. < http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov >  stock photo: doctor and young patient. < www.istockphoto.com > |
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