The WMA speaks out on Iran but not on Israel. Why not?
I note with interest in the BMJ that the World Medical Association has spoken out about possible collusion by doctors with abuses of prisoners in Iran (1). You report Dr Otmar Kloiber, WMA Secretary General as saying: We were approached by a number of different physicians in Iran. Because the reports come from different sources we thought they were likely to be reliable.we wanted to send a strong signal with this motion. Dr Frank Montgomery, vice President of the German Medical Association (and a WMA Council member) added: physicians serve people not governments. Physicians will not participate in torture or degrading treatment. They are the whistleblowers of such criminal acts committed by governments.
I commend these statements and the WMA action, which is exactly what the WMA was mandated to do when it was set up after WW2 as the official watchdog on medical ethics worldwide. But there could hardly be a greater contrast with the WMA approach currently to Israel. In June the BMJ reported that 725 doctors from 43 countries had written collectively to the WMA Council to urge them to examine whether the Israeli Medical Association, a WMA member, had been adhering to the WMAs own codes, notably the WMA Declaration of Tokyo, the seminal anti-torture code for doctors (2). The WMA is mandated to ensure that its member associations abide by its codes. The question was all the more resonant in the light of the fact that longstanding IMA President Yoram Blachar had become WMA President.
The charge was exactly the same as the one the WMA is now raising in relation to Iran: the collusion of doctors (and the IMA) with the practice of torture of prisoners in Israel. The 725 doctors cited a voluminous evidence base from both international and regional human rights organisations of high repute; attached to the letter were reports from Amnesty (twice, a decade apart), including their Briefing paper to the UN Committee Against Torture last year, Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), the Defence for Children International, Palestine section , publication of the 2008 United Against Torture report (UAT, a coalition of 14 Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations) to the UN Committee Against Torture. PCATI and PHRI separately submitted reports and findings to the WMA Council to urge them to examine the case. Dr Wendy Orr, the South African doctor who blew the whistle on the collusion of doctors with torture and other abuses of prisoners in the apartheid era and was later a Commissioner in the SA Truth Commission, also wrote to the WMA Council to press them to act. (The Medical Association of South Africa was for a period excluded from the WMA). Prominent international academics like Professors Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein lent their names from the start. Recently in the BMJ Professor John Yudkin urged the BMA, a fellow WMA member, to use their influence in a matter of such medical ethical gravity(3).
And the response of the WMA Council after 5 months? Not a word, not even acknowledgement of receipt of the original letter with evidence and signatory list, despite polite reminders, despite further material submitted in support of the case. Last week, Professor Alan Meyers of Boston University, the lead signatory, finally reached Dr Edward Hill, WMA Council Chair, on the phone in USA, to be told that the WMA would not be responding.
The campaign did prompt a response from WMA President Blachar, not the addressee of the letter, in his own right. In August he instructed London lawyers to threaten me personally with proceedings for libel (I am the convenor of the campaign), alleging that I was conducting a vendetta and had "deceived" the other 734 signatories.
So what are we to conclude from the stark difference in the WMA handling of the Israel case by comparison with Iran? The WMA Council have turned away from an evidence-based appeal by doctors which, arising from 43 countries, is of unprecedented scope and breadth, an appeal framed within the WMAs own codes and pronouncements on the duties of doctors. This is a significant breach. If the weight of evidence we cite does not constitute an emphatic case, then no evidence about medical ethical breaches anywhere ever will, and we might as well throw the Declaration of Tokyo in the waste bin. To speak out about Iran is laudable, but it is easy. As with comparable concerns about the role of US doctors at Guantanamo and elsewhere, our case is surely the litmus test of whether internationally agreed medical ethical codes actually matter, and can hold transgressors to account when they have powerful friends
Derek Summerfield
1. Wise J.WMA calls on Iran to respect medical ethical code. BMJ 2009;339:4321.
2. Kmietowicz Z. Doctors call on head of WMA to quit as matter of priority. BMJ 2009;338:2556.
3. Yudkin J. The IMA and doctors complicity in torture. BMJ 339:4078
Competing interests:
17 years involvement in human rights work in Israel-Palestine
Rapid Response:
The WMA speaks out on Iran but not on Israel. Why not?
I note with interest in the BMJ that the World Medical Association has spoken out about possible collusion by doctors with abuses of prisoners in Iran (1). You report Dr Otmar Kloiber, WMA Secretary General as saying: We were approached by a number of different physicians in Iran. Because the reports come from different sources we thought they were likely to be reliable.we wanted to send a strong signal with this motion. Dr Frank Montgomery, vice President of the German Medical Association (and a WMA Council member) added: physicians serve people not governments. Physicians will not participate in torture or degrading treatment. They are the whistleblowers of such criminal acts committed by governments.
I commend these statements and the WMA action, which is exactly what the WMA was mandated to do when it was set up after WW2 as the official watchdog on medical ethics worldwide. But there could hardly be a greater contrast with the WMA approach currently to Israel. In June the BMJ reported that 725 doctors from 43 countries had written collectively to the WMA Council to urge them to examine whether the Israeli Medical Association, a WMA member, had been adhering to the WMAs own codes, notably the WMA Declaration of Tokyo, the seminal anti-torture code for doctors (2). The WMA is mandated to ensure that its member associations abide by its codes. The question was all the more resonant in the light of the fact that longstanding IMA President Yoram Blachar had become WMA President.
The charge was exactly the same as the one the WMA is now raising in relation to Iran: the collusion of doctors (and the IMA) with the practice of torture of prisoners in Israel. The 725 doctors cited a voluminous evidence base from both international and regional human rights organisations of high repute; attached to the letter were reports from Amnesty (twice, a decade apart), including their Briefing paper to the UN Committee Against Torture last year, Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), the Defence for Children International, Palestine section , publication of the 2008 United Against Torture report (UAT, a coalition of 14 Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations) to the UN Committee Against Torture. PCATI and PHRI separately submitted reports and findings to the WMA Council to urge them to examine the case. Dr Wendy Orr, the South African doctor who blew the whistle on the collusion of doctors with torture and other abuses of prisoners in the apartheid era and was later a Commissioner in the SA Truth Commission, also wrote to the WMA Council to press them to act. (The Medical Association of South Africa was for a period excluded from the WMA). Prominent international academics like Professors Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein lent their names from the start. Recently in the BMJ Professor John Yudkin urged the BMA, a fellow WMA member, to use their influence in a matter of such medical ethical gravity(3).
And the response of the WMA Council after 5 months? Not a word, not even acknowledgement of receipt of the original letter with evidence and signatory list, despite polite reminders, despite further material submitted in support of the case. Last week, Professor Alan Meyers of Boston University, the lead signatory, finally reached Dr Edward Hill, WMA Council Chair, on the phone in USA, to be told that the WMA would not be responding.
The campaign did prompt a response from WMA President Blachar, not the addressee of the letter, in his own right. In August he instructed London lawyers to threaten me personally with proceedings for libel (I am the convenor of the campaign), alleging that I was conducting a vendetta and had "deceived" the other 734 signatories.
So what are we to conclude from the stark difference in the WMA handling of the Israel case by comparison with Iran? The WMA Council have turned away from an evidence-based appeal by doctors which, arising from 43 countries, is of unprecedented scope and breadth, an appeal framed within the WMAs own codes and pronouncements on the duties of doctors. This is a significant breach. If the weight of evidence we cite does not constitute an emphatic case, then no evidence about medical ethical breaches anywhere ever will, and we might as well throw the Declaration of Tokyo in the waste bin. To speak out about Iran is laudable, but it is easy. As with comparable concerns about the role of US doctors at Guantanamo and elsewhere, our case is surely the litmus test of whether internationally agreed medical ethical codes actually matter, and can hold transgressors to account when they have powerful friends
Derek Summerfield
1. Wise J.WMA calls on Iran to respect medical ethical code. BMJ 2009;339:4321.
2. Kmietowicz Z. Doctors call on head of WMA to quit as matter of priority. BMJ 2009;338:2556.
3. Yudkin J. The IMA and doctors complicity in torture. BMJ 339:4078
Competing interests:
17 years involvement in human rights work in Israel-Palestine
Competing interests: No competing interests