Approximately 24 hours before flying back to Walla Walla for my final semester at Whitman, I watched the sun rise from a hospital’s labor and delivery room. I’d decided to work a night shift as a doula (non-technical birth attendant) so close to my departure because being present for births usually motivates me. New life gives me hope, and I feel vicariously empowered by seeing what women are physically capable of. I wanted to harness that energy to jump-start my last semester.

Birth is part of a duality and, as cliché as it sounds, where there’s life there’s death. Despite working as a birth doula for almost two years, I’d only ever thought about stillbirths or other fatal complications as statistics rather than realities. When one of those things happens in my hospital, we draw a picture of a fallen leaf on the call board next to the patient’s name. This is a code indicating to other staff members that something went wrong and that room is a solemn place of mourning, not a celebration.

There were two fallen leaves that night. I returned to Whitman one day later, utterly heartbroken over what I’d seen.

Facing mortality is scary. We have to live with the knowledge that everything we encounter is temporary, including our own corporeal bodies. As I grow older, I grow less comfortable with that idea. When I complain about aging and growing, I know my underlying thoughts can be traced back to fear of the ultimate unknown. The closer graduation gets, the less I can stop thinking about it. There’s no going back to childhood at this point, but looking forward presents a void of uncertainty and anxiety.

Many of the books I read as a kid were centered on a kind of fleeting magic that can only happen in childhood. The stories acknowledged that going on magical adventures was an ephemeral phase with a finite end that happens when kids inevitably grow up. I began to believe that growing up was a process that kills the imagination. I tried very hard not to become a grown up, but somehow I did. Now I can drive, vote, go to bars, and in a couple weeks I will have a bachelor’s degree. While characters in books and fairy tales can stay wide-eyed and impressionable forever, I can’t. I now realize that’s a good thing.

Children are supposed to grow up. Having a close encounter with the grim alternative to growing up put it into perspective, because there are some who don’t get the chance to grow up at all. I am lucky that I have the opportunity to grow, learn and develop my full potential. I’m glad to see friends from the class of 2015 growing up together.

I’ve thought about that night frequently throughout this semester, and I’ve come to realize that I’m glad I was there. My role has always been to support the laboring women, and by supporting them that night I ensured they were not alone. Systems of support are crucial to growing up gracefully. At Whitman, we provide a strong system of support for each other. Being united with like-minded, passionate people is the only way I have found solace as I face the darkness of the unknown.

My gold necklace broke last week. I hadn’t taken it off once since my grandmother gave it to me five years ago, and I was surprised by how uncomfortable having a bare neck made me feel. I’d come to think of my necklace as an unchanging component of my appearance, an extension of my physical self. Though on some level it seemed silly, getting upset over a broken necklace, my reaction made me realize that I relate to material objects on a much deeper level than I would have ever expected.

The idol on the necklace is Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu god. He is one of the most beloved gods across India, and his presence is supposed to bring success and prosperity. My grandmother gave me the necklace when I was 16 years old. I was a wallflower, painfully shy, preoccupied with school and stressed out about the upcoming college application process. I appreciated the gift because I was in a time when I needed all the success and prosperity I could get.

I’ve changed so much since I was 16. I’ve heard that the body’s cells are all completely regenerated every seven years, and though it hasn’t quite been that long, I do think I’m a different person from when I first put the necklace on. In high school I was a theater kid, I exercised, I didn’t use swear words, I barely ever watched TV and chemistry was my best subject. None of those things are true about me now. Most aspects of my appearance have changed as well. I got my braces off, drastically cut my hair, gained 20 pounds and watched my tan skin color change from light to dark to light with the passage of every season.

And yet the necklace provided continuity. When I look back at old pictures from the past phase of my life, I can see the same necklace peeking out under my clothes at prom, high school graduation, the first-year ’80s Dance at Whitman and every other picture from every other normal day of my life. The necklace was like a constant, linking together all the different people I’ve tried to be over the past five years. No matter what happened to me, it would always be around my neck. The same old necklace for the same old Anu.

When I was in middle school, one of my friends told me that I should never wear makeup because people become dependent. She said that women who wear makeup every day describe feeling “naked” without lipstick. At the time, I thought it must be profoundly stupid to change your appearance so consistently that you forget what you actually look like. And yet, that ended up being how I related to my necklace. I generally don’t think of myself as attached to material possessions, but I felt like that necklace was part of me.

Wearing the necklace gave me confidence and a sense of security I never noticed until it came off. Without anything around my neck, I felt exposed. I had nothing to cover my chest and nothing to fiddle with when I got nervous. Though it was a very small part of my appearance, and most people probably didn’t notice it, I felt like I could hide behind it. The feeling of having a chain constantly rubbing against my neck was so comforting and familiar. It’s interesting how easy it is for familiar things to become unquestioned. After going two days without my necklace, I started wearing a different one just so I could have something there until I get my old one fixed.

The first thing I did when my necklace broke was call my grandmother. Even though she is currently in India, on the opposite side of the world, and long distance calls are both expensive and difficult to time, I felt like I needed to talk to her. It’s a necklace, but it’s also a tangible connection with someone I love. It reminds me that there is someone who cares about me and believes in me. I feel like she’s there with me, and I don’t have to face anything alone.

Until it broke, I only thought of my necklace as a thing. However, now I realize I thought of it as a connection to my grandmother and an extension of myself.

Over spring break I had the opportunity to attend a conference for students passionate about becoming positive agents of change in the fight for global health equity. I spent the weekend talking to other students, established activists and advocates, and medical professionals who were all committed to fixing the social conditions that foster disease. The highlight was an address by Dr. Joia Mukherjee, a professor at Harvard Medical School who has been the medical director of Partners in Health since the year 2000. During the conference I felt inspired and excited. It was clear that achieving a universally recognized “right to health” is a movement gaining strength. A movement that I am part of!

When I returned to Whitman after break, I came down from my health equity high with the sobering realization that this movement isn’t present on the Whitman campus. It’s happening in big cities like New York and Chicago, where large groups of people can be mobilized, not on small colleges in small towns. As president of the GlobeMed club, I’ve tried to motivate my peers to challenge these issues. I know there are a lot of students here who do care about changing health care politics. I’ve also become intimately familiar and frustrated with the problems in our campus culture that hold people back.

Whitman is, generally speaking, a very healthy community. Most people exercise, eat nutritious food and aren’t noticeably struggling with diseases. Unfortunately a lot of stigma surrounds mental health disorders on campus. I think that sentiment may also be indicative of how students characterize other illnesses as well. We study diseases, but we don’t struggle with them, at least not long term. People get sick, but they always get better. Most Whitman students have probably known someone with a serious or chronic disease, but these stories are too uncomfortable to be talked about openly in our happy, healthy community. Whenever I tell people stories about the badly timed fainting spells I had for a couple months after contracting dengue fever or how crazy it was to cough up blood when I though I had tuberculosis, I always preface with “but I’m totally fine.” Not being fine is not really acceptable in this community, even if it’s due to a disease outside of anyone’s control.

Since most Whitman students come from families and communities that have access to insurance and quality health care, health problems like the flu or a bad cut are minor setbacks, not serious conditions. However, for people without good health care, small problems can escalate into life-threatening conditions very quickly. Even if problems are easily treatable, people learn to live with miserable conditions because they don’t have health insurance or they can’t afford to see a doctor if it means missing work. We don’t see this happening on the Whitman campus.

Before I started working in a county hospital, I had no idea how many sick people were out there. I now know that the myriad of cases seen by the hospital barely scratches the surface even in one city because inherent injustices in our health system means that there are so many people who do not have access to treatment. On the Whitman campus we are stuck in our sterile community, detached from the world, forgetting how much suffering happens in the world due to inadequate health care access. We also forget that we can do anything to help alleviate that suffering.

One of my big takeaways from the conference was that discussing issues is not enough. When it comes to issues that affect people’s health, there is no time to wait. It’s matters of life-or-death on a huge, global scale. Taking action is critical. At GlobeMed we’ve tried writing letters, going to protests, volunteering at free clinics, fundraising for medical supplies and youth education initiatives. The right to health needs to be a movement, even on the Whitman campus.

I’ve always loved books and stories that take place in dystopian societies. I’m a fan of science fiction, generally speaking, because I like seeing portrayals of how people might behave if they were in a different world with access to seemingly impossible technology. Dystopias are interesting because they provide a glimpse of a world even more messed up than the one we actually live in. It’s the ultimate thought experiment that explores what happens when extreme injustices are ingrained in societies and people. However, I wonder why I find those books so compelling and enjoyable when the realities they present are terrifying portrayals of what the future may hold.

I can be very anxious at times, and frequently my fears will manifest themselves in how I interact with the world. For example, I can’t sleep in a room that has large objects over the bed because I know it will fall and squash me in the event of an earthquake. I’ve never given my phone number to a stranger because I legitimately feel that I can’t rule out the possibility that they’re a serial killer. A downside to having an active imagination is that after I finish scary books or movies, I become convinced that everything is out to get me. After the first time I read “1984″ in middle school, I made a point of actively avoiding security cameras in public places and stores. The problem I noticed was that, to some degree, I could recognize the problems of Big Brother happening in the world around me. George Orwell worked as a police officer in imperial Burma during the 1920s, and his experiences there helped inspire “1984.” It’s hard to accept the fact that there are really bad things still happening in the world right now.

I’m incredibly uncomfortable knowing about so many things — drone strikes, mass incarceration, child labor, police brutality and human trafficking — happening not only in faraway places but also at our own doorsteps. It’s especially sad that so many of these things are supported by our country or our system. It’s also hard to accept that so many people will support or follow these practices. I don’t want to believe that there are people actively working to oppress or subjugate others, but reading the news about racial inequality, religious intolerance, murders of gay or trans people and the emerging anti-feminist movement shows me that they exist. I don’t believe that there are inherently bad people, but I also know that people who are raised and indoctrinated in hate-filled environments can turn out to be pretty bad. That scares me. I think most people know, on some level, that the system is messed up but choose to ignore the realities of it.

Facing the systems of power, truly acknowledging the struggles, can leave people feeling so helpless. From that perspective, trying to do anything about it seems so impossible. It’s so much easier to pretend that they are not happening or pretend that being passive or neutral isn’t helping perpetuate the problems. Dystopian books are so important because they reflect an unacceptably skewed version of society. If people draw parallels between the dystopian world and our own, it encourages critical thought about what’s so wrong and what we should be thinking about or doing. Books like “1984″ provide examples of people who rise up in spite of everything to take down the power. Resistance will never be futile.

As a second-semester senior, I spend a lot of my time thinking about, planning and panicking over the future. I don’t think I can predict where I’ll be in a decade, but no matter what happens, I hope I will be able to travel a lot.

Growing up, I was lucky to have parents who valued travel. Seeing and living in places with extreme manifestations of poverty made me aware and appreciative of my own privilege. This was especially apparent in India, where much of my family lives. If my grandparents hadn’t come to the United States, my life would have been very different. Interacting with other kids who shared many of my hobbies and interests despite coming from a different way of life helped me develop my view of the world, one in which people matter.

A lot of people gush about how travel has improved them, so before I get too caught up in that, I think it’s crucial to acknowledge that seeing poverty is not the same as living in poverty. Seeing poverty doesn’t automatically make you a good person, even if you’re emotionally moved by it.

In many cases, the poverty in a country results from colonial exploitation, a legacy the United States is unfortunately linked to. Tourists get to experience a better version of the places they visit than most locals. As visitors, we can pick and choose what aspects of the place we want to experience and what structural legacies we ignore. Though travelers may go without daily showers and other modern amenities, living without comforts is an immutable fact for some people. The ability to uncouple oneself from one’s surroundings is a position of power many people don’t share. While I encourage everyone to travel if they can, I hope we can all be aware of how privilege permeates travel culture and acknowledge what isn’t helping people on the ground.

There’s a difference between traveling for the sake of helping people and traveling for the sake of expanding one’s own worldview through meeting people from diverse cultural backgrounds and visiting famous landmarks. In the latter case, the traveler is using experiences to broaden his or her own horizons. The long-term results of travel will go on to influence his or her choices in life, which may help other people in the long run. I don’t think it’s bad or exploitive, so long as the traveler isn’t claiming that he or she has given back to communities when that hasn’t happened.

This summer I’ll be working in Thailand with a nonprofit foundation that helps provide refugees from Burma with quality education and vocational training. I know a lot about the organization, and I know they produce tangible positive results in the community. However, I’m worried that my time with them will benefit me more than the people I want to help. I don’t want to live a life of service for the sake of helping myself; there’s a very obvious and uncomfortable disconnect there.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of voluntourism in general and how I want to relate to it. The organization I’ll be working with is reputable, but if organizations don’t do background checks or screenings on the people they’re recruiting, it’s suspicious. For example, some medical students spend some time working abroad in countries that have lax patient safety laws so that they can practice operations and surgeries they aren’t considered qualified to do on their own in the United States. Reputable nonprofits like Doctors Without Borders require primary care volunteers to be through with residency training and surgeons to have a few additional years of post-residency experience to guarantee they have enough practice to be genuinely useful.

I’m also skeptical of people who are really into volunteering abroad but don’t do any type of community service in their own hometowns or cities. Poverty in the United States manifests differently than it does in countries that have more visible slums, but over 15 percent of the population lives below the poverty threshold. Helping the poor may not be as glamorous when it happens in a homeless shelter rather than under palm trees on a tropical beach, but it’s nevertheless critical. The volunteer work that I’ll be doing this summer in Thailand will be very different than the volunteer work I’ve done in San Francisco General Hospital, but I’m happy to do both. I think seeing and trying to help alleviate poverty from different angles and in different manifestations is important for developing a view of the world where people matter.

While working in a hospital over winter break I came into contact with a patient who had active tuberculosis. Three weeks later I got a cold and began coughing up bloody phlegm. Naturally I assumed the worst — that I had tuberculosis — and would have to be subjected to a forceful regimen of unpleasant drugs, or else be committed to a sanatorium and never be heard from again. Thankfully I’m fine, no tuberculosis, but it got me thinking about what would happen if I did contract the disease and how my experience as a privileged American woman would differ from the reality of most TB cases today.

In the United States, a standard TB treatment would involve taking a combination of four drugs: isoniazid, rifampicin, pyrazinamide and ethambutol for two to eight months. Isoniazid has the highest risk of side effects, which include hepatitis and its symptoms like jaundice, vomiting, fever, pain and diarrhea. Ethambutol can cause retinal damage or other visual field problems. These drugs sound scary, but they’re effective and most people are able to continue their normal routine throughout the course of their treatment. The big public health concern is getting people on antibiotics before the disease can spread.

Thankfully, in the United States cost of drugs rarely hinders anyone’s treatment. Tuberculosis is a sufficiently important public health issue that if a TB positive patient is uninsured or otherwise cannot cover the cost, local health departments are likely to pay for the regimen of drug therapy. However, it’s incredibly important for people to finish their course of treatment. If they don’t make sure every last bacteria is killed, drug resistance will develop in the remaining ones. Under a directly observed treatment (DOTs) policy, patients are monitored during their treatment to ensure completion of the therapy.

Spread of tuberculosis and development of drug resistance are much bigger problems in other countries that don’t have DOTs programs in place. Russian prisons have been unfortunate case studies for the development of drug resistant TB. Inmates with TB are administered antibiotics but do not finish their course of treatment if they get out before it is completed. This leads to resistant bacteria that can spread through the population. The resistant bacteria will likely find its way back to the prisons and to inmates receiving incomplete drug therapies, expediting the evolution of drug resistance.

In other parts of the world people with active tuberculosis will not be given any drugs unless they can prove they will be able to completely afford and finish the treatment. Though the spread of TB is a slightly better alternative than the spread of drug-resistant TB, it is nevertheless sad that a sick individual’s well-being does not factor into the decision of whether or not they’ll be treated.

Health can be a great equalizer. However, disparities in population health tend to mirror other inequalities faced by the communities. Tuberculosis cases in the United States are largely associated with recent immigrants and poor people. When I was considering the possibility that I might have TB, it seemed so weird to me because it isn’t a disease that tends to affect people from my socioeconomic background. There are almost 10,000 TB cases in the United States every year, but I never hear about them or feel particularly threatened knowing that there are people in my city who have it.

TB has been a present threat in our society for hundreds of years and it continues to be now. Since it has an unpleasant but reliable treatment and rarely affects wealthy and middle class citizens, people in the United States don’t tend to take action against it. Individuals suffering from TB deserve more attention than we give them. Though it’s not currently a big threat to most Americans, it is responsible for a great deal of suffering. I’m ashamed because I feel like I’ve subconsciously othered the type of people who get TB, and I think that’s one of the worst ways to characterize a disease that causes human pain. Demographics shouldn’t matter when it comes to action against a pathogen like TB. Human health and well-being are too important for that.

I’m biracial. While I love my identity, sometimes having multiple ethnicities leaves me feeling like I don’t belong because society hasn’t established a space for who I am. My confusion about race began in elementary school in San Francisco, where almost all of my class was ethnically Chinese. I was both the only white girl and the only brown girl.

Many of my biracial friends hate the question “What are you?” Though I don’t enjoy being referred to as a “what,” I actually love being asked this. I appreciate the fact that people acknowledge the confusing intersections of my identity and don’t automatically lump me into a box full of preconceived notions of what a given race is or isn’t.

Race is confusing and uncomfortable for me, but since we don’t live in a post-racial society, it’s important to talk about. The problems will remain whether or not they’re pleasant to discuss. Growing up, I could never quite place my finger on why being white and Indian made me feel like such an outsider. My friends at school thought of me as very Indian, while my family in India equated being American with white. I never knew which grouping I belonged in because the binary of white or not white didn’t leave room for someone like me.

However, I feel like my personal confusion is insignificant compared to sometimes-unacknowledged struggles that other minorities have gone through. My struggle with racial identity came from a lack of biracial representation that I could identify with in the media and among peers. However, no one ever treated me differently due to my race, and I never had to worry that police officers would harass me.

I’ve always felt weird referring to myself as a “person of color.” I’m pale enough that I think I can probably pass for white, especially in the winter months. Since we live in a system where minorities and people of color are systematically oppressed and disenfranchised, I’ve come to associate the idea of being a “person of color” with the struggle of experiencing and rising up against such oppressive forces. I’ve never experienced racism. I am part of White America, with all the benefits of white privilege, without even being fully white.

When I use the phrase “person of color” to refer to myself, I feel like I’m taking the microphone from the minority voices who deserve to be heard and interjecting my own opinion over theirs. My opinions on systemic racism may be valid, but they come from a place of second hand experiences, research and critical thought, rather than things I’ve lived through or experienced firsthand. I don’t know if it’s fair for me to validate my thoughts with my status as a person of color.

Nevertheless, despite my hesitance to refer to myself as a person of color, I’m constantly reminded that I’m not white either. Since I now live in a predominantly white community, it can feel like my Indian side is a cool accessory that distinguishes me from other brown haired bespectacled girls, rather than my personal heritage. I can make wonderful Indian food and I can decorate my bedroom with tapestries of Hindu deities without it seeming like appropriation, but I’d like to think that my Indian half is more than an accessory, considering how I’ve tried hard to learn the stories and philosophies of my culture.

One of the hardest things about having family members who are people of color while being able to pass as white myself is seeing the discrepancies in how they’re treated compared to how I am treated. In the airport, where it takes me a couple of minutes to make it through security, my father — who has dark skin and a foreign-sounding name — always seems to be subjected to an extra twenty minutes of pat downs and random bag checks. We’re in the same family! I can carry the memory of some of the ways people I love have been treated because of their race, but the lasting repercussions of systemic oppression and discrimination against darker-skinned people in American society will never affect me directly.+

When I was 16, my favorite book was “Gone With the Wind.” I loved the melodramatic love story between two awful and manipulative people, and the epic portrayal of how the Old South went up in flames. And above all, I loved Scarlett O’Hara.

Scarlett showed me how a sheltered but stubborn young woman could be incredibly brave in the face of adversity. Her decisions weren’t always good, but once she made up her mind, there was no stopping her. I respected that determination. She behaved like a force of nature, defying anyone who dared to stand in her way. Scarlett O’Hara seemed like the ultimate feminist icon.

I cringe when I look back on my obsession with “Gone With the Wind” and Scarlett O’Hara. Since I’ve never experienced slavery or any of the social ramifications of it that are still present today and I’ve never been in an abusive relationship, I can read over descriptions of these things without being triggered by past experiences. However, as I’ve grown older I’ve learned to be critical. I wouldn’t characterize it as feminist anymore.

The book condones and perpetuates a lot of sexist, racist and otherwise awful things. When I read it at 16, I didn’t see the problems. I just saw a determined woman struggling to succeed in a crumbling, backwards society. I didn’t think to question the book’s glorification of rape and slavery, even though they now seem like such blatant underpinnings of the novel. It just goes to show how easy it is to ignore uncomfortable topics.

Scarlett’s unlikability is an integral aspect of her character. However, there are too many times when her valid desire to assert herself and defy social norms is played off as an example of how mean and unreasonable she is. For example, Scarlett is able to earn a small fortune after the war by taking over her husband’s store, but despite success, her radical changes are portrayed as tiresome and foolish. People tell her husband to do a better job of reining her in.

Even more concerning is how the book handles intimate partner violence. The iconic “romantic” moment between Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, when he carries her up the staircase, is one of the worst examples. Scarlett asks him to stop and attacks him when he doesn’t, but he forces himself on her until she enjoys it. Margaret Mitchell, who wrote “Gone With the Wind” in the 1930s, had been in an abusive marriage herself. Though her own experiences and internalizations of abuse are reflected in Scarlett and Rhett’s unstable relationship, it comes off as being venerable and romantic, which could be very harmful to impressionable young girls who read the book.

For a book set in the South during the Civil War, “Gone With the Wind” discusses race surprisingly little but portrays it in a very uncomfortable way. Scarlett has no problem with slavery. The author makes a point of clarifying that the O’Hara family was nice to their slaves and never whipped them, but slavery, regardless of whether or not slaves are being beaten, is inexcusable.

It’s disappointing to think that as a feminist and ally against racism, I can’t seem to let go of the book even when I know it perpetuates bad ideologies. I wish that I could separate the things I love about “Gone With the Wind” from the troubling aspects, but, just like in real life, the bad and the good are intertwined. It’s just a book, but books have a lot of power and can change how people view the world. It makes me wonder how many other things I love have detestable aspects that I’ve accepted because I didn’t notice it or because I didn’t want to notice it. In spite of all the awful things in “Gone With the Wind,” there is a part of me that will always love it, though I can no longer justify why.

Illustration by Eric Rannestad.

In the beginning of medical training, one of the essential principles learned is “do no harm.” Most people who have been writing about ebola in the United States aren’t medical professionals, so they might not feel a responsibility to uphold this rule. Coverage of the few ebola cases in the United States has read like some sort of zombie horror novel where all hell breaks loose the moment ebola spreads from West Africa to the United States and all of a sudden isn’t just a faraway statistic anymore. Ebola is scary, but fear of ebola shouldn’t lead to fear of other cultures or people.

Two summers ago, I contracted a tropical hemorrhagic fever. It was dengue, not ebola, but the two viruses have similar symptoms including high fever, vomiting, muscle pain, and internal and external bleeding. They both burden the developing world almost exclusively. Despite the fact that there are over 100 million cases of dengue annually, and that the death toll from the current ebola outbreak is quickly approaching 5,000, efforts to improve conditions that foster proliferation of disease haven’t received enough support. Additionally, neither virus has any FDA-approved vaccines or drugs.

We live in a world where pharmaceutical manufacturers, insurance companies and a dysfunctional medical-industrial complex turn illness and disease into something immensely profitable. However, since diseases like ebola and dengue primarily affect poor people who live far away, they are neglected, and research that could save millions of lives goes unfunded. In this system human suffering only matters when the people suffering can afford expensive treatments, and everyone else is just a number. People aren’t statistics. When the numbers say that 5,000 people have died of ebola, it means that 5,000 individuals, with talents and dreams and loved ones, died a bloody, unglamorous death.

When social factors play a role in determining quality of health, disease isn’t just a biological concern. Ebola is a race issue, due to how some new policies are equating fear of ebola with fear of Africans, a feminist issue, since almost 75% of ebola cases are in women, and a socioeconomic issue, as the Texas hospital sent the first US ebola victim home from the emergency room because he was uninsured.

My ultimate goal in life is to work for Doctors Without Borders. In following the work they’ve done to combat the ebola outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, it’s become clear to me that they’re not just combatting a disease. Liberia has a sad history of colonialism and civil war, which has left bad infrastructure and a rightful distrust of Americans. In order to do their work and take care of patients, Doctors Without Borders must find a way to overcome these systemic problems, handle cultural differences with sensitivity and prove to the people of Liberia that they’re not there to exploit or exterminate.

One way they’ve tried to show this was in the decision that they would not use experimental non-FDA approved vaccinations or drugs to treat ebola patients. Guided by medical ethics and the principal of “do no harm” the organization holds a position that distances itself from neocolonialism. These unapproved drugs could potentially save lives, but patients might not be able to give informed consent to participate in a clinical trial and the drugs could have unintended side effects. By not turning West Africa into a giant shady drug trial, Doctors Without Borders is legitimizing their intent to provide impartial care. Their price for integrity is measured in lives lost. However, the consequences of straying from the principals of bioethics would foster malpractice, distrust and dehumanization, ultimately costing even more lives.

Illustration by Coopper-Ellis

A few weeks ago, I did an experiment in biology lab that involved cutting open the body cavity of a live frog and dripping adrenaline onto its still-beating heart. The results, a dramatically increased heartbeat, were incredible to watch firsthand. However, dissecting a living animal instead of a dead one made me think about the value of life in a way I never had before.

Despite being vegetarian and pacifist, anatomy is so fascinating that cutting open dead animals to look at their insides has never bothered me. On the contrary, I really enjoy it. I think it is important to see and become physically familiar with the different organ systems as a way to understand the interactions and processes that happen inside the creature, and as a way to compare one life form to another.

When the animal is dead it’s easy to take its entire life for granted. Once it’s dead, it’s dead. There is no harm in using its body for science. The animals seem like they’ve only ever been a bunch of squishy parts that came together to function like a machine would, rather than the remnants of an actual living creature. I’ve dissected a lot of animals, everything from horseshoe crabs to squids to fetal pigs, and I don’t think I ever once thought about the life the animal might have lived before dying.

With vivisection, it seemed so clear that as far as we were concerned, the end-all be-all point of this animal’s life was to be used as a science experiment. From a reductionist perspective, all a frog really does is eat, breathe, reproduce and just exist. Yet, our involvement raised its perceived value and purpose in life to be defined by what could be learned through its death, and not any sort of value it could create by just existing. I don’t know if there is a specific point to any life, especially the life of a frog, but I like to think that there is some sort of inherent value in life.

Modern justification for using live animals for the good of science can be traced back to Claude Bernard, the founder of experimental physiology. In his 1865 book, “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine,” he spends a lot of time discussing the importance of vivisection. He wrote, “He [the scientist] does not hear the animals’ cries of pain. He is blind to the blood that flows. He sees nothing but his idea, and organisms which conceal from him the secrets he is resolved to discover.”

Vivisection is important because while anatomy can explain the parts of organs, physiologic function is complicated and intricate. If you have a new hypothesis about how something works inside the body, it must be tested in a living system. The body has so many interacting factors and coordinating centers that a simulation might not be good enough to predict how the body’s systems will be affected. Life is so complex that it would be near impossible to account for every quirk within an individual’s physiology.

Nevertheless, I felt weird about vivisection. Opening a living animal seemed so unnatural, like we were breaking some sort of unspoken rule about bodily margins. The frog was completely brain dead by that point; it couldn’t feel a thing, but my discomfort didn’t come from my fear that the animal might have been in pain. It came from the blurring of boundaries, and the power of manipulating how or if life will proceed. Once the body was opened, the taboos surrounding life and death were unmasked and irrelevant. I got to play with some of the fundamental principles that govern life, and, though it took me out of my comfort zone, it was exhilarating.