BMJ  2005;330:255 (29 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7485.255

Letter

Palestine: the assault on health and other war crimes

Israeli situation is not analogous to apartheid regime

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—The personal view by Summerfield generated considerable correspondence.1 2 However, it has not addressed the concluding analogy of the Israeli situation with that which led to suspension of the Medical Association of South Africa (MASA) from the World Medical Association (WMA). Summerfield implies that since the boycott of South African medicine helped in the fall of apartheid, a boycott of Israeli medicine should be the objective.

The issues surrounding the MASA suspension are well known and have been revisited recently.3 The complicity of the medical profession was explicit, and "apartheid medicine" itself was not "in the dock." There may be errors of judgment in Israel, but surely not in the same league?

BMJ readers may not know what apartheid medicine entailed. I am South African born and benefited from medical education within apartheid, so maybe I should be embarrassed? Leave aside maldistribution of healthcare, malnutrition, neo-Nazi pseudogenetic race classification, . . . [Full text of this article]

David Katz, professor

University College London, London WC1E 6BT d.katz@ucl.ac.uk


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