More than 50 prominent Karachi physicians staged a six hour hunger strike last Saturday in protest at the targeted killing of fellow physicians in Karachi and elsewhere in Pakistan. Also, the Pakistan Medical Association, angered by the government's apparently uncaring attitude towards the killings, has now called for a countrywide strike on 8 April.

Doctors here have been calling for adequate security for some time now. This year alone, 13 doctors, most of them belonging to the Shiite sect of Islam, were killed in Karachi, while 270 have been killed …