Guest Post: Doctors Respond to Lancet Article on Israeli Doctors and Torture
March 18, 2013 16:04 by Alex MargolinDr. Jeffrey Goldstein and Dr. Steve Samuel are members of DARA (Doctors Against Racism and Antisemitism), which seeks to ensure that medical publications avoid promulgation of subjective articles aimed at vilifying any race, nation or country. Visit their website at www.daradocs.org.
“Israeli Doctors Accused of Collusion in Torture”. This is only an accusation, but when it appears in a piece of purportedly credible, medical journalism, it conveys a presumption of guilt. The reality is that this is a recent headline in the medical journal, The Lancet.
Sharmila Devi’s article makes claims and repeats statements inconsistent with objective journalism and clinical medicine. The tragic death of Arafat Jaradat, a 30-year-old father of two and member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, has been turned into an opportunity to besmirch the Israeli Medical community.
An autopsy conducted the next day by Israeli forensic pathologists concluded the likely cause of death to be a heart attack (myocardial infarction). It is not disputed that vigorous attempts at cardiopulmonary resuscitation were carried out for almost an hour. Palestinian Authority’s chief pathologist, Dr. Saber Aloul, who attended the autopsy, is reported as saying that “bruising on the body was evidence of torture.”
However anyone who has taken basic CPR training knows that the physical force required to provide adequate chest compressions in order to generate the necessary cardiac output invariably leads to chest trauma, not infrequently to rib and/or sternal fractures. Bruising would be clearly visible by the next day. For a doctor to conclude that bruising equals torture is unscientific and unprofessional. A previous study in The official journal of the European Resuscitation Council confirmed this, where fractures were found at autopsy of 18 of 19 patients (95%) who receives CPR. (Source Resuscitation: Volume 60, Issue 2, February 2004, Pages 157–162 and http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300957203003757)
Dr. Michael Sayre, a spokesperson for the American Heart Association and a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, has previously said broken ribs are to be expected when doing CPR and the worry of causing a break shouldn’t deter people from helping someone in cardiac arrest.
Dr. Victor Quint, an anaesthesiologist at the Humber River Regional Hospital in Toronto stated, “Anyone who goes through CPR may look like a trauma victim.”
If Israeli doctors had anything to hide, would they invite Dr. Aloul to observe the autopsy? His attendance as the PA’s chief pathologist, contrasts sharply with the events which occurred 6 days following the death of Mr. Jaradat, when Ayman Samara, a 40-year-old Palestinian man, died in the Palestinian Authority’s Jericho Prison.
As Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh wrote,
“The Palestinian Authority has actively prevented Palestinian journalists from covering the mysterious death of Samara. One Palestinian reporter, who was caught interviewing people outside Jericho Prison, was even detained for several hours by Palestinian Authority security officers.”
The absence of any comment or reference to medical literature or non-biased expertise as relating to trauma induced during CPR, immediately places Ms. Devi’s article outside the realm of objective, medical/scientific publication standards. Responsibility for accepting the article for publication rests on The Lancet editor.
The Lancet is a reputable medical journal. But its unsubstantiated claims and inflammatory headlines vilify rather than inform and educate. The Lancet has diminished its credibility and betrayed an agenda unfit for trustworthy medical literature.
Please send your considered comments to Anne Rosenthal – Head of Public Relations at a.rosenthal@elsevier.com, the journal’s ombudsman at ombudsman@lancet.com or to Bill Godfrey – Chief Information Officer at b.godfrey@elsevier.com.
Image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com, flickr/akeg.
HaroldT
4:49 am
Mar 21, 2013
I wish EVERY Jewish doctor would boycott the Lancet and not submit any medical articles to them. There must be other medical journals.
PS Look up Yathrib on the internet for a supression of Jewish history.
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Ben
3:34 pm
Mar 22, 2013
Great article and explanation of why the knee-jerk torture accusation doesn’t hold up to factual scrutiny.
That said, and unfortunately, it’s anything but a surprise that the British medical establishment would see an anti-Israel ball and pick it up to run with. The Yoram Blachar WMA case, along with the various activities of the criminal liar and junk-yard dog Derek Summerfield, will attest to that. Read up on Summerfield if you have a strong stomach, it’s really informative.
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a jew whose nose was broken by prohitler muslims
12:00 am
Mar 23, 2013
typo above by me: ” no statement ” no gay ” “.
Also, Labenal, I just oversaw all of what I wrote and I can agree to it, also if another one would have said approximately what I said.
What people like you do, Labenal, is not good, is abusive. You are the only one who has here tried to ridicule and discriminate me. This is now recorded.
Apparently, you did not even read my nickname. Then, you’d know what I am “on about”, Labenal.
I am not like HR. with me, anyone can have a fight. I don’t “got ma dogs in it”, as this violent crazo mel gibbon gibson says, this naziswine. I am in the fight. got it? unlike the israeli gov and da un, I am willing to kill all nazis now. all. period.
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a jew whose nose was broken by prohitler muslims
12:04 am
Mar 23, 2013
what you do, labenal, is an extreme impertinence.
my singer career was ended, my lip split from the rest of the skin of the face, by a wanton unwarned and shortly planned attack assault by muslims who praised hitler.
i don’t want any country to take in those muslims who are right extremists. but some workers for any gov are themselves neonazi rightwing extremists and let in them on purpose. extremist foreigners. so that all the most other innocent non-violent foreigners are slaughtered in new anti-foreigner holocausts, is already happening. totally terrible.
you, labenal, falsify people’s view. not only of me, who talks totally on-topic evrywhere. I accuse you, Labenal, legally.
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a jew whose nose was broken by prohitler muslims
12:10 am
Mar 23, 2013
I repeat, that I want to work in a reasonable way.
But if too many Labenals and hamas exist, then, I predict that I will happily, after some debauch of mine, go up in flames, killing a lot of hamas and hizbolla.
how to make it so, that this happens in a just, serious, concise, precise, ethically just way, so that no one who is innocent gets harmed? The same questiona as in ANY military action, actually.
I do not threaten. I am independent. The Israeli gov does not TELL ME what TO DO, I do WHAT I WANT.
But I obey Israel, and there is nothing here that could interfer. I don’t obey ultra-orthodox maniacs. That’s also always clear. Israel ain’t ruled by them so that’s also ok.
shalom.
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a jew whose nose was broken by prohitler muslims
12:17 am
Mar 23, 2013
haha to have to SO low as to put oneself into this STRAIGHTJACKET of “agreeing” to ONE’S OWN statements …. to LABENAL, I gotta crawl down to a really low level.
I don’t demonize Labenal like Al Jones demonized Obama so da anti-black racists could have a feast. oy. oh no. that, I don’t do. ey.
But Labenal, why do you hammer on me? well not hard, but online, all is structural. out of a mouse, an “elephant” can be made (nevermind then for “now”, that Elephants are the best animals and BEHEADED by ruthless mongrels in AFRICA, 600 Black soldiers died protecting Elephants
). Where one starts to discriminate another for no real reason, others will follow n do that to many others. !!! !!!
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a jew whose nose was broken by prohitler muslims
12:29 am
Mar 23, 2013
Harold T and Ben’s comments are excellent and top-notch. I am content to see that there is a – as good as it can ever get — broad Jewish and pro-Jewish community among the medical doctors, which cares about the danger of antisemitic tendencies, masked under “medical” terms.
In Germany, it was the “question” of MALE circumcision, which, like foremostly we Jews do it, is non-harmful but SANITARY and hygienic and even, as comes out newly can prevent sexual illnesses of a lot of kinds. One judge in germany laid a verdict because of ONE case, in which a MUSLIM doctor performed circumcision on a muslim boy at age 4 or later, after which that boy bled two days later. that judge is a nazi.
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a jew whose nose was broken by prohitler muslims
12:34 am
Mar 23, 2013
… while male circumcision performed by Jewish and real doctors who are professional, truly, and experienced, is very positive, constructive, helping the human body against aids etc, and not degrading sexual performance,
it is the FEMALE circumcision performed by a minority of African no-good-”witchdoctors” and such sharlatans who perform botched abortions. The female circumcision is there to cut away the female sexual organs, so that the female can no longer feel joy during sex. It is MUTILATION, in fact. The female circumcision is, as I heard, even performed in OTHER countries by Blacks who have moved there. But I wouldn’t want this to lead to general anti-black racism. That’s clear too.
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a jew whose nose was broken by prohitler muslims
12:49 am
Mar 23, 2013
israel is now as of two years not anymore inside the united nations. neither in the world trade organisation.
china’s government is. inside the “un” and the “wto”.
that means: the “un” and “wto” is there nazi, where some of them let in china, and oust israel.
this is the REAL tendency and FACT.
china’s government is nazi and has under jiang zemin massmurdered four million Falun Gong systematically in 1000 real concentration camps, where the Falun Gong were organrobbed ALIVE (David Kilgour and David Matas, Canada, investigated chinese gov “organ harvesting” scandal). Alex Jones too reported about busses to airports in china, where the Falun Gong are inside the busses organrobbed, murdered
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a jew whose nose was broken by prohitler muslims
12:57 am
Mar 23, 2013
No doubt, not only Jews, but also all pro-Jewish People, of which we Jews always think THEY’D NOT BE THERE AT ALL, but they ARE there, and not in MEGA tiny numbers, no, NOT that, no, ALL of US think of all of this AS AN EFFORT AND DEED TO HUMILIATE ISRAEL UNRIGHTFULLY.
While Israel’s People are permanently attacked, as likewise Jews around the world, the international “community” DARES to act AGAIN like HITLER.
USA’s PEOPLE DID, HAVE ON YAHOO sum already one year or not even, ago, CLEARLY in UNSON, SMITTEN, SHOUTED against that “uniited nations”. MANY Americans SCREAMED: “LETS GET OUTTA DA UN !!! ”
That was brave. I salute those Americans who said that.Antisemites there got no chance.
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a jew whose nose was broken by prohitler muslims
1:03 am
Mar 23, 2013
… in UNISON. ALL, that is to say some 80 or more percent of Americans, have CRIED out against the united nations who is SLAMMING against ISRAEL.
Obama DOES have to look at that and respect the will of the American People.
Not the will of racists or of tax-risers either. Obama wants to continue spending in order to relieve the mid class of higher taxes, but he can’t, since he was overruled apparently – for now — by maybe rather the senate than the congress, which mostly acts really good, against for example yahoo who has in 2007 delivered unsuspecting chinese commentators to the massmurder nazi china government in their request. A US congressman compared it to Anne Frank. correctly. !!!
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kate b
5:10 pm
Mar 29, 2013
So this ‘poor man’ was a member of that high profile terrorist Islamist group the Al Aqsa Martyrs whose objective is Mohamet/Allah’s….(same thing) desire to strike terror into the hearts of unbelievers – oh, and death to Jews.
Doctors are ALWAYS at it. At the Glasgow MRCGP conference Samar Musmar, An-Najah National University, ‘palestine’, Balamory, Neverland or whatever had the simple-minded eating out of her hand with her lies about Israel. She was descirbed as a GP ‘hero’. Samar, luv, you’re old enough to know you are not a ‘Palestinian’ but a Jordanian (or maybe an Egyptian, who knows?) you can’t fool all the people all of the time.
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6:30 am
Apr 22, 2013
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l
6:23 pm
Apr 24, 2013
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