Coping with the resilience of our moralistic society to plunge to pathetic new lows is not easy, especially when the blatant disregard for human lives is committed by those supposed to shine through the dark and care for all human beings everywhere. However, the Hippocratic Oath probably stops at the doorstep of death, which could be the only reason why a fully-functional hospital refused to give a fig about the nauseating stench of hundreds of decaying dead bodies on its rooftop since god knows when. It only took an uproar for the administration to come forward with a sloppy explanation, which still appeared fixated on passing the blame parcel. From delays on the part of Edhi’s humanitarian burial service to an ineffective response by the police and rescue officials, everyone under the sun had something to do with the appalling abandonment of putrefied corpses left to the mercy of eagles and crows. However, the mortuary has yet to claim responsibility for its gross mishandling of relevant SOPs and a sheer violation of medical ethics. Since the horrific visuals doing round on social media have popped up on Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi’s radar, investigation committees have been announced as performance pressure blazes on the next-in-command. Seeing the executive take note of what is happening on the ground is heartening, indeed, but shouldn’t the higher authorities feel responsible for ensuring such inhumane episodes do not happen in the first place? Till when would we continue to follow the doom-destined knee-jerk path instead of coming up with proactive surveillance? The cold-blooded training given to those medical students who mercilessly cut and prodded bodies like a treasure trove can never lead to empathetic practitioners. What transpired in Multan should be taken as a wake-up call by the entire medical community since the doctors we expect to kindly tend to our illnesses are nowhere close to this brigade of heartless little robots. *