The stethoscope has always been more than a tool for auscultation; it is a physical bond between two human beings that no government has the authority to sever. In early 2026, as the Iranian regime launched a brutal crackdown on its own citizens, we witnessed the most extreme test of this bond. When the state demanded that physicians become extensions of the secret police, our colleagues in Iran chose the higher calling. They chose the patient.
The statistics from this period are harrowing. With thousands of citizens killed and tens of thousands injured, hospitals were transformed from places of healing into zones of surveillance. Security forces patrolled emergency departments, waiting for the wounded to arrive so they could be identified, arrested, and often disappeared. In this environment, the act of treating a gunshot wound became a revolutionary act.
Active defiance in the face of state violence
The “medical mentality” displayed by Iranian physicians like Dr. Alireza Rezaei and Dr. Alireza Golchini was not a passive adherence to a code. It was an active, dangerous defiance. By treating protesters in clandestine basements and private homes, they faced the very real threats of arrest, torture, and execution. They refused to provide patient names to intelligence officers, effectively standing between their patients and the machinery of state violence.
This is the purest expression of our professional society. It is the realization that our primary loyalty is never to a flag, an ideology, or a ruling party, but to the vulnerable human being on the exam table. These healers did not just practice medicine; they protected the sanctuary of the clinical encounter. They proved that the primum non nocere mandate is not a suggestion for peaceful times, but a shield for the darkest ones.
A moral mirror for global medicine
For the rest of us, practicing in far safer conditions, the sacrifice of our Iranian colleagues serves as a profound moral mirror. It is easy to talk about patient advocacy during board meetings or in insurance disputes. It is an entirely different matter to advocate for a patient when a soldier is standing at the door. Their courage highlights a universal truth: The physician is the last line of defense for human dignity when all other social structures have failed.
We must find our own moral courage in their example. While we may not face the gallows for our clinical decisions, we face constant pressures to prioritize metrics, politics, or institutional convenience over the soul of our work. Let the memory of the physicians of 2026 be our North Star. We side with the patient, always and without exception, because if we do not, the white coat loses its meaning and becomes just another uniform of the state.
Their legacy is a reminder that our integrity is the only thing the state cannot take unless we give it away. By standing with our patients, we do not just save lives; we save the very heart of what it means to be a physician.
Farid Sabet-Sharghi is a psychiatrist.
