@article{ref1,
title="You can't carry a gun and a stethoscope at the same time [Letter]",
journal="AMA journal of ethics",
year="2022",
author="Johnson, D. Brendan",
volume="24",
number="4",
pages="E340-341",
abstract="I read the February 2022 issue of the AMA Journal of Ethics (&quot;Tactical Health and Law Enforcement&quot;) in dismay: How could an entire issue on tactical medicine fail to question a physician's complicity in violence it assumes? I write from Minneapolis, Minnesota, the city of George Floyd's murder and a city that in February 2022 witnessed a special weapons and tactics (SWAT) execution of another young Black man, Amir Locke. Black and Brown Americans often experience the police not as a helping presence but as a direct threat: modern American policing has roots in the sporadic slave patrols and militias of the 1700s, which maintained their racialized, violent, and very profitable society.1  Medicine is a healing profession and must always attend to the most threatened segments of society. Furthermore, it is a self-regulating profession based on trust, just like the judiciary. And, just like the judiciary, the appearance of impropriety is almost as threatening as the real thing. Consider the &quot;armed tactical physician&quot; who, after apparently stumbling into the role, &quot;needed to improve [his] own firearm skills and tactical knowledge&quot; and who &quot;trained regularly with the SWAT team,&quot; which he identifies as &quot;my team,&quot; eventually earning the affectionate nickname &quot;Doc.&quot;2 With evident pride, he &quot;had streamlined [his] medical pack to fit the cramped and now comfortably familiar space of [the team's] armored truck.&quot;2 I cannot mince words: I do not trust a physician who swears to &quot;do no harm&quot; one day and trains to kill the next...<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="2376-6980",
doi="10.1001/amajethics.2022.340",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/amajethics.2022.340"
}