Rapid Responses to:
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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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![[Read Rapid Response]](/icons/misc/sectionDOWN.gif)
Speak up for those killed by arms, the Lancet, and the other 2000 journals published by Reed Elsevier
- Richard Smith (26 February 2007)
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Academics taking action against Reed-Elsevier
- Nicholas P Gill (2 March 2007)
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Speak up for those killed by arms
- Naomi J Brewer (2 March 2007)
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Health care and the arms trade
- Marion Leighton (5 March 2007)
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Re: Academics taking action against Reed-Elsevier
- Gayle L. Davies (5 March 2007)
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2nd letter to Reed Elsevier (response to their response)
- Gayle L. Davies (5 March 2007)
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Richard Smith, President Clapham Institute for the Study of Human Frailty
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Back in the dawn of time (actually 1974) I wrote my first letter to a medical journal, the Lancet, astonished that nobody had responded to Ivan Illich's assertion that "the major threat to health in the world today is modern medicine." Did the Lancet's readers accept the assertion or were they unable to come up with any compelling arguments to oppose Illich? Thirty years on, pockmarked by experience, I'm astonished that nobody much seems bothered that the world's largest publisher of scientific and medical journals, Reed Elsevier, should be promoting arms fairs. Are people not bothered or are they scared to speak up? Or perhaps people think that it would be disloyal to the journals, which include the Lancet. If people are wary of being disloyal I urge you not to be. You do nothing but good for the Lancet and the other journals by speaking up. So speak up--and do so here on BMJ rapid responses. You can be confident that your protests will reach the leaders of Reed Elsevier. Richard Smith Competing interests: I'm the author of the article to which the news article refers, an internationally acclaimed curmudgeon, and an ex-editor of the BMJ. |
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Nicholas P Gill, Mathematician Bristol, BS5
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I share Richard Smith’s outrage at publishing house Reed-Elsevier’s connection to the arms trade. For this reason I joined some 140 other academics in writing an open letter to Reed which appeared in today’s Times Higher Education Supplement. In the letter we call on Reed to cease all involvement in arms fairs. In particular we state that Reed’s involvement in the arms trade “is entirely at odds with the ethical and social obligations we have to promote the beneficial applications of our work and prevent its misuse, to anticipate and evaluate the possible unintended consequences of scientific and technological developments, and to consider at all times the moral responsibility we carry for our work.” The letter is signed by some of the most respected minds in academia, united by their disgust at Reed’s participation in the arms trade. It forms part of an ongoing campaign; an online petition requesting that Reed stop organising arms fairs has almost 1000 signatories: http://idiolect.org.uk/elsevier/petition.php In addition many academics have refused to submit papers to Reed journals until they get out of the arms trade: http://cage.ugent.be/~npg/elsevier/signstatement.html The tide is turning against Reed and it is turning because academics are taking a stand. Join us! Contact: nickgill[at]cantabl[dot]net Competing interests: None declared |
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Naomi J Brewer, Junior Research Officer Centre for Public Health Research, Massey University, Wellington 6140, New Zealand
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I am saddened to see that it appears as though nobody has taken up Richard Smith’s challenge to speak up through ‘BMJ Rapid Responses’ against Reed Elsevier’s promotion of arms fairs. As Richard asks “Are people not bothered or are they scared to speak up?”. I’m not sure of the answer, but maybe by being the first I can encourage others to do so as well. Therefore I respectfully call on ‘Reed Elsevier to divest itself of all business interests that threaten human, and especially civilian, health and well-being.’ And I applaud Richard Smith, the JRSM, Kamran Abbasi and all others involved for speaking out against this anomaly. Competing interests: None declared |
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Marion Leighton, medical registrar Wellington Hospital, New Zealand
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I applaude this article about medical publishers and their support of arms fairs. I'm sure many people don't imagine a large conference centre, set up similar to a local craft fair but selling all manner of 'defence' equipment from guns and tanks to torture material. Of course they are usually invite only, so ordinary people can't see what goes on. It is all very well for publishers of medical journals, drug companies and even private health care institutions to say they are involved in the 'legitimate defence industry' but as stated by Richard Smith, these 'fairs' also sell torture equipment and they have no qualms about selling equipment to regimes that might be seen as less than legitimate or legal. How 'legal' is most oppression and does legality reflect morality? 'Legitimate defence' in the modern world seems to involve many more civilians than soldiers, hospitals and humanitarian organisations are in the direct firing line, and much of it seems to go on in someone else's country. If we, as health care professionals are really serious about improving the lot of humanity, I think it is our duty to encourage the firms we work with to think twice about their moral decisions. If profit at any cost is the bottom line, then we may as well give up now and go home. If we continue to support these companies, then we have a direct line of responsibility to the the child maimed by the unexploded cluster bomb. I believe those of us working in health care have a moral imperative to speak out and directly challenge any involvement in war. Competing interests: None declared |
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Gayle L. Davies, Law Librarian Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (NSW)
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Text of a letter with 66 signatories, faxed to the Chairman of Reed Elsevier, and to the Managing Director of Lexis-Nexis (Australia) - another subsidiary of Reed Elsevier, on 11Th September, 2005 (the date on which the DESi Arms Fair opened in London). Dear Mr Hommen, Re: SPEARHEAD EXHIBITIONS We are a group of lawyers and law librarians, who are users of the services of Reed Elsevier’s subsidiary company, Lexis-Nexis. Many of us have used Lexis-Nexis publications since we were at university. We rely on them now for our daily work. Lexis-Nexis publications are used in our Courts, and are highly visible on Benches and Bar Tables. We are also aware of Elsevier’s considerable reputation in publishing in medicine and other sciences. We are therefore extremely distressed to learn that another of Reed Elsevier’s subsidiaries, Spearhead Exhibitions, is in the business of organizing arms fairs, and is staging the Defence Systems and Equipment International Exhibition in London this month. While we are not suggesting that there is anything illegal in this association, we believe it to be totally incompatible with Reed Elsevier’s core business of publishing for the legal and medical professions. The very phrase “arms fair” is abhorrent: first, because there is nothing “fair” about the arms trade, and second, because the word “fair” implies that it will be a festive occasion - an insult to the children who are killed and maimed every day by land-mines deliberately designed to look like toys and butterflies (http://www.unicef.org/graca/mines.htm). As we have seen in Sarajevo, East Timor, and Iraq, libraries are often the targets, and always among the victims, in any armed conflict. By promoting arms, Reed Elsevier via Spearhead Exhibitions is supporting a superfluous industry : if the arms industry ceased production today, there would still be enough weapons of all kinds available to wipe out the entire human race several times over. Yet the events of September 11, 2001, and London on July 7th 2005, show that the United States, and Britain, despite being the two largest arms manufacturers and exporters in the world, were completely unprepared for terrorist attacks which used inexpensive small-scale technologies to devastating effect. Government outlays for military purposes play a large role in driving fiscal deficits and in raising global interest rates, leading to increased debt, capital shortage, and cut-backs to social and civil infrastructure, all of which result in the exacerbation of social and ethnic tensions, violent crime, fundamentalism, instability and conflict. The current situation in New Orleans provides a stark illustration of what happens to civil society when funding is diverted from social infrastructure to the arms industry, using the pretext of invented wars (on drugs, on terror, on Iraq........) as the justification. The secrecy and lack of transparency of inter-state arms transfers carry the potential for corruption (see for example this BBC item on the Scott Report on British arms deals with Iraq in the 1980s (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/15/newsid_2544000/2544355.stm) Large numbers of legally traded weapons end up on the illicit market, where they are used in terrorist and criminal activities, such as drug trafficking and people trafficking. “Arms fairs” glamorize weaponry and other aspects of military technology, creating a governmental mentality which gives them priority over socially useful institutions such as courts, legal services, and libraries. Even in a developed country like Australia, many government law libraries are being closed down because Federal and State governments cannot or will not fund them adequately - resulting in substantial loss of business for Lexis-Nexis and other publishers. Furthermore, such an association must surely damage Lexis-Nexis’ reputation as an impartial conduit for legal information and knowledge. It could lose its respected legal writers and authorities, as well as shareholders, who may not care to be associated with a conglomerate which also peddles death and destruction. We urge you to uphold in practice the ethical standards to which you have subscribed in writing. In order for your support of the UN Global Compact to have any credibility at all, your company must stop organising arms fairs such as DSEi and Helitech Latin America. We therefore urge you to stop Reed Elsevier’s involvement in all arms fairs. Competing interests: None declared |
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Gayle L. Davies, Law Librarian Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (NSW)
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This is the text of a 2nd letter to Lexis-Nexis (Australia), in response to their response to the letter of 11th September 2005. Mr Max Piper, Chief Executive Officer, Lexis-Nexis Australia Tower 2, 475-495 Victoria Avenue Chatswood, NSW 2067, Australia Fax: +61 2 9422 2701 Dear Mr Piper, Re: REED ELSEVIER AND SPEARHEAD EXHIBITIONS As the co-ordinator of the original letter on the above subject which was faxed to you on the 11th September, I am replying to your response as circulated on the Australian Law Librarians’ Group e-list on the 22nd September. Unfortunately, your response did not address a number of issues raised in the original letter. Accordingly please find attached another copy of that letter, for your information and further consideration. Please note that the original letter did not purport to represent the views of the signatories’ workplaces, and neither does this. In your response, you justify Spearhead Exhibitions’ role in the promotion of weaponry and other military technology by reference to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which, you say, recognizes that every state has an inherent right to individual and collective self- defence. We wish to point out that a reading of Article 51, viewed in context, makes it very clear that it is not an assertion of any absolute right, but that the exercise of such right – in the event of attack – shall be subject to, and be limited by, the actions and interventions of the Security Council. Article 51 “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain inter- national peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.” It is ironic indeed to claim the support of any part of the United Nations Charter for a commercial activity whose objective is the promotion of the trade in arms, and the product of which will be their proliferation. The Charter, on the contrary, requires all member states to “promote universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and freedoms” in order to achieve “economic and social progress and development” (Articles 1, 55 and 56) and “to promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources” (Article 26). Moreover, Article 33 of the Charter requires that “the parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice” . You also assert that the promotion of arms is justified in the name of freedom and democracy, and imply that Spearhead Exhibitions is somehow providing a valuable service because it is working in partnership with democratic governments, in a context of tight regulation. It is the nature of democracies that governments change, as do their philosophies regarding corporate regulation. The governments of Britain, the United States and Australia have de-regulated much corporate activity in the past few years, and there is very little reason to believe that the arms industries in Britain and the United States were excluded from that process. In fact there is much evidence coming from the prosecution of the war in Iraq that suggests that the United States’ previously strong regulatory system in relation to defence procurement has been almost completely dismantled in favour of the private sector. Many of the governments represented at the recent DESi exhibition last month are not democratic regimes, are either unstable, or maintain stability at the expense of their citizens’ human, civil and political rights, and operate under very different legal systems from ours. Even if arms sales were restricted to democracies with similar legal systems to ours, there is no way to prevent arms being sold on to third parties. It would be interesting to speculate, for example, on how the helicopter gun-ships which have been deployed indiscriminately against rebels and civilians in Darfur were obtained. See http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/36028.htm The situation in the Sudan is currently the subject of investigation by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. We note that Lexis-Nexis is a major supplier of legal publications to the very Courts and Tribunals in the United States, Britain and Australia, which may be required to adjudicate on cases involving war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by any of the governments or private contractors represented at the DESi and other arms exhibitions organized by Spearhead. Although your response indicates that in terms of corporate structure, Lexis-Nexis and Spearhead are separate entities, the association raises serious questions as to what effect Reed Elsevier’s overall corporate direction may be having on Lexis-Nexis’ editorial content, and as to whether Reed Elsevier’s diversification into an area so antithetical to the whole purpose of legal publishing, may be affecting the reputation and quality of Lexis-Nexis publications and services. In this regard our concern is similar to that expressed by another division of Reed Elsevier, which produces the leading medical journal, The Lancet. We trust that you will pass on these concerns to your Head Office, and again, through you, we urge Reed Elsevier to divest itself of all contact with the arms trade. Competing interests: None declared |
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