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Writing for peace

BMJ 2006; 333 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.0610388 (Published 01 October 2006) Cite this as: BMJ 2006;333:0610388
  1. Camille Gajria, final year medical student1,
  2. Jack Piachaud, psychiatrist2,
  3. Mareeni Raymond, foundation year 13,
  4. Farhad Cooper, final year medical student4
  1. 1Imperial College, London
  2. 2Medical Foundation Care of Victims of Torture
  3. 3Whittington Hospital, London
  4. 4St George's Hospital Medical School, London

Camille Gajria and coauthors examine the power of words and peace over war

The pen is mightier than the sword, so they say: the power of ideas is greater than violence. Ideas can be, and have been, aggressive-consider the Nuremburg trials, at which Julius Streicher was found guilty of inciting antisemitism through his publication Der Sturmer, which had enhanced Hitler's power.1But could ideas also be used to overcome violence and to promote a safe, healthy environment?

Doctors against conflict

Treating the wounds of war is most associated with doctors working in conflict zones. But as early as 1805, doctors described war as the “enemy of Mankind.”2 When the Red Cross and the Geneva conventions emerged in the 1800s, they had support from the medical profession. Dr Rudolf Virchow, renowned for his contributions to physiology, is also championed for his recognition that political circumstances affect disease and its prevention. He viewed advocacy as integral to a doctor's work: “Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing more than medicine on a large scale.”3 He thought that the true role of medicine is to identify the obstacles to health and to overcome them.

In the 1900s, an estimated 191 million people, half of them civilians, died as a direct or indirect effect of war.4 In 1951, a few years after the bloodiest period of human history, the Lancet published a letter expressing great concern about the Korean war, the threatened use of nuclear weapons, and the risks of a third world war.5 The signatories called for doctors to join in halting the senseless drive to further conflict, and included Richard Doll, who was later knighted for his pioneering work on smoking and lung cancer. So the Medical Association for the Prevention of War was born, and its purpose …

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