Rapid Responses to:
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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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![[Read Rapid Response]](/icons/misc/sectionDOWN.gif)
Summerfield and his research
- Harvey Gordon (30 October 2007)
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Keep Politics out of Medicine
- Ruth Green (30 October 2007)
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Not alone
- Jenny Tonge (30 October 2007)
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Royal Society of Medicine under attack by pro-Israel doctors
- derek a summerfield (1 November 2007)
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Intrimidation of those not apathetic to cruelty
- Christopher J Burns-Cox (2 November 2007)
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Re: Intrimidation of those not apathetic to cruelty
- Brian Robinson (3 November 2007)
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Progressing understanding, reflection and reconciliation
- Wouter Havinga (5 November 2007)
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Royal Society of Medicine under attack
- Nicholas J Naftalin (8 November 2007)
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Medical ethical abuses in Israel: what counts as evidence?
- derek a summerfield (11 November 2007)
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It is the people that matter
- Hadas Ziv, Tel Aviv, Israel (12 November 2007)
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There is no Medicine without politics
- Ruchama Marton (19 November 2007)
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Harvey Gordon, non-principal GP locum varies
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Dr Summerfield says he gave a lecture to the RSM on his research into medical ethics in Palestine and Israel but his criticisms appear to be all about Israel. It would be illuminating to know when he visited that country, what institutions he attended and if he was denied entry to any. Further he mentions violations and I am sure readers would be interested to hear about his first hand experiences in his "case study" Competing interests: None declared |
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Ruth Green, retired KT6 4JX
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Dr Summerfield’s complete freedom to express his views is evidenced by the frequency with which his letters & articles are published. It is understandable that his participation in what should be apolitical events is challenged, bearing in mind his unbalanced hostility to Israel. I believe in keeping politics out of medicine as in the case of the Israeli doctors who earlier this month screened 40 Iraqi children in Amman, subsequently performing emergency heart surgery on two of them in Israel. http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6989663,00.html Competing interests: None declared |
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Jenny Tonge, MB BS House of Lords, London SW1 0PQ
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Sir, Your readers may be interested to know that Dr Summerfield is not alone in being subjected to pressure by the pro Israel lobby. A year ago as a former LibDem MP and now a member of the House of Lords, I was invited to talk at the Medical Society of London on the topic \" A Liberal View of Health\". Sadly the invitation was withdrawn after pressure from pro-Israel members of the board on the grounds that I had been anti Semitic in expressing empathy for Palestinian suicide bombers. I have also cricised the activities of the pro Israel lobby here and in the USA, ably described by Profs. Mearscheimer and Walt at Harvard in their book, \" The Israel Lobby\". They have been boycotted themselves.. I am not anti Semitic, never have been, never will be, but I abhor the gross injustice perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians over the last 40 years, which is also harming the reputation of valued Jewish people all over the world. Whenever I speak on the subject, attempts are made by the pro Israel lobby to stop me and pressure is put on my party leaders to throw me out of the party and silence me. However, Dr Summerfield and I know, that our treatment is nothing compared to the restrictions on Palestinian doctors and academics, let alone those on thousands of Palestinian students who are being refused exit from Gaza and the West bank to pursue their studies abroad. Academic boycotts it seems, are only wrong when directed at Isaelis. Yours sincerely, Dr Jenny Tonge MBBS. House of Lords SWI 0PQ Competing interests: None declared |
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derek a summerfield, Hon Sen Lect, Institute of Psychiatry, London Maudsley Hospital, SE5 8BB
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I am responding to Dr Naftalin's rapid response (30 Oct)which readers will find tagged to the Baum article on "Should we consider a boycott of Israeli academic institutions?" I'd be interested to know if others who attended the RSM conference in question considered my presentation to be an "unbalanced political diatribe" that was "exploiting the good offices of the Royal Society". I spoke entirely in accord with the abstract printed in the conference programme. This was a brief resume of the role of health professionals in conflict zones,and of international medical ethical watchdogs like the World Medical Association and the WMA Tokyo Declaration- forbidding the participation or collusion of doctors with torture. Using Israel/Palestine as my main case example, but also quoting Iraq, Turkey, South Africa, USA,Uruguay,Argentina, Chile, I reviewed the evidence for tension between the behaviour of doctor as doctor and doctor as citizen. With regard to my main case example, would Dr Naftalin consider as unbalanced diatribe the evidence I cited- from Amnesty International, or the International Committee of the Red Cross, or the Israeli doctors of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, or the photo I showed of the ambulance with the entry hole made by an Israeli Defence Force rocket at the exact centre of the large red cross painted on its roof? Again,we witness one facet of what might be called the natural limits of evidence-based medicine. I imagine that Dr Naftalin would have no reason to query the output of such reputable sources if the subject was other than Israel. But when evidence collides with strongly held values or aspects of identity, the impulse is to discard the evidence and vilify those who point to it. Competing interests: None declared |
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Christopher J Burns-Cox, Consultant physician Southend Farm,Wotton-under-Edge GL12 7PB
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Summerfield and Tonge report on activities that ought to make us very worried. This control of freedom of speech and debate must be publicly discussed and exact details given. What are the names of the persons and organisations that have tried to intimidate the two authors? As Elie Wiesel has said:'The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference' and we must not give in to indifference or apathy. Competing interests: None declared |
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Brian Robinson, Retired psychiatrist doing Section 12 work for social services MK5 6WB
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I wasn't at the RSM meeting so I can't speak about that. Nevertheless the points raised by Lady Tonge and Dr Burns-Cox, as well as by Dr Summerfield himself do need to be addressed. As for those who talk about 'keeping politics out of medicine', most seem to want that only when it's the wrong sort of politics. At other times, the politics go unnoticed, which reminds me of Bernard Shaw's remark, "It's like the taste of water, you don't notice it because it's always in your mouth - at least, it's always in *my* mouth". Health, access to health, justice in the provision of health, &c &c ... How can medicine not be aware of a political context? The problem in discussing Israel has to do - as we all know - with sensitivities. Nobody here needs history lessons. I think some of the Jewish response to criticism of Israel is based simply on a historically conditioned fear, and as we know when speaking of conditioning, you don't need the whole stimulus to evoke the response. You don't need the full sentence, or paragraph, or article or speech. But the corollary is that too often frightened people wont wait for the full text. Of course one problem is that you do unfortunately get a reinforcement of the conditioned response from time to time, and it is - as classical learning theory tells us - the worst (in this context) kind of reinforcement: intermittent reinforcement is extremely powerful. But I'm not talking here about the antisemites or the endorsers (nothing to do with empathy) of homisuicide bombers. But there's a related aspect. My impression is that some Jewish people (and by no means only Jewish people) who are very strongly committed to Israel with an almost religious intensity of belief, people who closely link the sense of their identity with that belief, know very well, at a level just beneath fully conscious awareness, exactly what it is they cannot bear to face, rather in the way some deeply hypnotised subjects in controlled experiments have been shown, after suitable suggestions by the experimenter, to deny the existence of furniture in a room round which they nevertheless negotiate with unerring accuracy. After the experiment, in discussion, when asked about it, they will come up with some really ingenious rationalisations. So quite often we know what it is we don't want to know. And I can empathise with that elective ignorance and its attendant states of denial - I've been there myself. But it doesn't mean we can leave it unchallenged, although it does mean we have to challenge it with sensitivity. We will be, to paraphrase Yeats in another context, treading on their dreams. I don't think the people who organise letters, emails, faxes, phone calls to broadcasters and newspapers are bad people (although their language has often been, to the detriment of their message), but I do think they're often very frightened people. I've spent my professional life talking to people deluded in one way or another. Admittedly the delusions in those cases were of a quite different order, with a different aetiology. But the ways in which you have to deal with them are not all that dissimilar. In many cases what people believe doesn't really matter very much - but in other cases the consequences of their beliefs can matter profoundly, and it's then that we have to take action. Myself, I wouldn't go for the lawyers, I'd prefer an approach modelled on ideas drawn from cognitive therapy. Competing interests: Signatory to Statement by Jews for Justice for Palestinians; Member of UK branch of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions |
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Wouter Havinga, GP locum GL6 6JL
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Competing interests: None declared |
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Nicholas J Naftalin, Emeritus Consultant Gynaecologist University Hospitals of Leicester NHST
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I largely agree with Woutar Havinga's response to Dr Summerfield's request for additional opinions on his presentation at the RSM's meeting on Religion Spirituality and Mental Health on 9th Oct. His opinion bears out my view that Dr Summerfield's presentation did nothing to promote reflection and reconciliation or to address the advertised topic. Abstracts in the programme are only available on the day and do not help those who attend on the basis of the outline advertised programme. Dr Summerfield is ingenuous if he feels that any aspect of the complex situation in the Middle East is as one sided as he would have us believe. At the same meeting, Martin Aaron presented from a very different perspective, giving some historical context and demonstrating inter alia,the bias against Israel in e g the UN Human Rights Council. UN resolutions are nonetheless frequently held up as 'evidence' against Israel. The Israel Medical Association, which works in collaboration with Physicians for Human Rights in Israel, refutes Dr Summerfield's allegations and his sources, something Dr Summerfield failed to mention, though he did show other selected extracts from their response. Dr Summerfield's ambulance slide demonstrated no more than an ambulance with a shell hole in the roof. To relate the collusion of Israeli doctors to human rights abuses on the basis of such photography is stretching credulity on many counts. But, as Dr Summerfield correctly states (eletters 1st Nov 07); 'when evidence collides with strongly held values or aspects of identity, the impulse is to discard the evidence and vilify those who point to it'. Competing interests: None declared |
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derek a summerfield, Hon Sen Lect, Institute of Psychiatry, London Maudsley Hospital, SE5 8BB
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Dr Naftalin is quite right to say that the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) refutes my sources- which are Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Int Committee of the Red Cross,UN emergency relief co-ordinators, B'Tselem, Public Committee against Torture in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, and many others. What Dr Naftalin is not right to say is that the IMA "works in collaboration" with Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI). The very idea would I suggest raise a hollow laugh at PHRI, whose experience over many years is that the IMA have been impervious to their appeals and documentation- to the extent of not even answering their letters. I invite PHRI to comment. Competing interests: None declared |
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Hadas Ziv, executive director 52 Golomb, Tel Aviv, Israel
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I have followed the responses to the article and found them missing, especially in the light of the reality we face daily. Today, I am on my way to the High Court of Justice were we struggle for the right of eleven patients in need of urgent health care unavailable in Gaza. Their requests to enter Israel - to receive treatment or to reach Jordan or the West Bank - were rejected by the Israeli General Security Service. Thus, they are sentenced to prologned suffering and death. How can it be then, that the focus of the argument is Israel's image or even the claims that it is sometimes singled out? The question must be the fate of these patients, the reality on the ground, and how we can best work to bring about the urgently needed change. In the face of the reality of occupation with all its sins and injustices, medical associations should obey the oath to "keep them from harm and injustice". They should not feel obligated to the image of their state or society but rather struggle openly and vigoursly to change its reality, and reject occupation - image will follow. This unfortunately was not done with the determination it deserves, by neither the World Medical Association nor by the Israeli one, as both are reluctant to address the policy (and politics) that underline the reality. The fact that patients continue to suffer though treatment is within reach (Tel Aviv is an hour away from Gaza)is a shame to us all. Competing interests: working in Phycians for Human Rights - Israel |
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Ruchama Marton, psychiatrist 52 Golomb street, Tel Aviv, Israel
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As president and founder of PHR Israel I was involved in the struggle against torture, and especially against the involvement of doctors in the process. I want to clearly state that the Israeli Medical Association failed at the time to answer this challenge in accordance with medical ethics and human rights. When PHR Israel had approached the IMA with evidence that Israeli doctors were participating in the process of torture by examining detainees before, during and after they were tortured, the IMA demanded that we give them the names of the doctors, avoiding the need to rebuke the policy as such. Even when we were accompanied by the chief police doctor, and he asked for their answer and guidance on the question of whether such examinations can be considered participation in torture, they failed to answer. Yet, in their official responses at the time, Dr. Blachar, their chairperson, defended torture, writing to the Lancet that the "use of such moderate pressure is in accordance with international law." The methods he defines as such were later prohibited by the Israeli High Court of Justice. Only after the legal system ruled was it safe for the IMA to conclude that indeed doctors will not participate in torture. But why blame the Israeli Medical Association alone, when the World Medical Association chooses to reward this stance by electing Dr. Blachar as their president. I hope that the IMA answers our current challanges with a better understanding of their role in defending human rights, the right to health and medical ethics. Competing interests: President and founder of PHR-Israel |
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