SPME Task Force on Medical And Public Health Responds to Richard Horton, New York Review of Books

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To the Editor,

Richard Horton quotes Dr. Jamil Suliman, who says “nothing is changing” with respect to the crisis in health care in Gaza (“Palestinians: The Crisis in Medical Care,” March 15, 2007 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19974 ). One might add that nothing has changed in reporting on this crisis either. Dr. Horton accepts the tendentious arguments of his Palestinian handlers without even elementary scrutiny. Could 90% of Gaza children under 11 really have PTSD? Did 40% of 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza really lose a relative among the 1,956 deaths in the second Intifada? Every time these supposed medical facts are subjected to scrutiny, they do not hold up (see, for example, a report of delays in medical care due to Israeli checkpoints in the British Medical Journal, May 26, 2006; a more careful look showed that the delays affected only 18% of emergency admissions, with an average delay of 8 minutes – this in the 6-month period of the study where terror attacks killed 76 and wounded 234 Israelis).


Dr. Horton did not apply his medical acumen to these reports. Nor did he question why medical staff took the time to videotape the mortally wounded child brought to Beit Hanoun Hospital and had this ready to show him. These are sad lapses for the editor of a major medical journal.


The sad truth is that Palestinian leadership has failed its people; that is the source of the medical crisis. Nor are the medical and civil society organizations that Dr. Horton praises immune from this failure. The Gaza Community Mental Health Program, which has condemned launching of kassam missiles from populated areas, also posts on its website that it “condemns the diggings near Al-Aksa Mosque and warns of the ramifications of agitating Muslim feelings.” So much for medical neutrality.

Steven M. Albert, PhD, MSPH
Professor of Behavioral & Community Health Sciences
Graduate School of Public Health
University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Albert is of the SPME Task Force on Medical and Public Health Issues

SPME Task Force on Medical And Public Health Responds to Richard Horton, New York Review of Books

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AUTHOR

Steven M. Albert

In early 2000, I read the newsletter of the American Anthropological Association and was surprised to see an essay by Jeff Halper, who founded the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. The essay was biased in every way: selective in evidence, slanted in language, naïve in reasoning. In preparing my reply I searched the web and found that for every one balanced entry on Israel’s position, there were perhaps 20 negative entries. Many were stridently rejectionist and anti-Semitic; those that were not betrayed woeful ignorance or frank silliness about the Middle East. My reply was published and the editor asked if I would countenance a reply from Halper and perhaps a dialogue. I agreed. Halper never replied, suggesting that he could not face argument informed by facts. This was my introduction to the politicized world of the academic Middle East.Since then I have narrowed my focus to anti-Israel bias in the public health and academic medical literature, which is monitored by the SPME Public Health and Medical Task Force. There is no shortage of bias in this field. Key British journals, such as Lancet and the British Medical Journal, devote major resources to academic partnerships and journalistic coverage designed to show Israeli policy is responsible for poor health, limited hospital access, and psychological trauma in the occupied territories. In fact, the evidence suggests that health is not poorer in the territories and that people do have access to hospitals. It also true that Israelis suffer poor mental health in war. These inconvenient facts, now published in 2 letters in BMJ and 4 in Lancet, help, we hope, in stemming the tide of 60 years of anti-Israel propaganda, which has finally managed to make its way into academic medical research.The Task Force continues to monitor and respond to the most egregious instances of bias in the most prominent journals. It consists of 5-10 academics across the globe, from Israel to the UK to the US, who take the time to respond to such falsehoods. We are pleased to see that most journals are willing to admit fault and publish our work. Our monitoring has led to one journal retracting a bad piece of science and to others publishing corrections.In this effort, we have also crossed paths with virulent anti-Semites, such as the one who wrote me privately and said he would never accept Zionist facts. Others are more subtle. But at heart these critics cannot admit that the medical and public health record of Israel simply does not support their claims of a terrorist, racist, imperial regime. So they make stories up or simply ignore statistics from the UN, WHO, and other international medical organizations.Facts and reasoned argument support the claims of Israel and can be used to undo the propaganda of its enemies. But we need to marshal this evidence and face the false claims directly. The biggest challenge here is time. The members of the Public Health and Medical Task Force all have day jobs. I run a major research effort on aging, chronic disease, and health promotion. My colleagues are similarly busy with academic medicine, psychological research, bioethics, and other areas. Still, we take time from these efforts to play a small but important part in ferreting out propaganda that may bias others less informed about Israel and the Middle East.


Read all stories by Steven M. Albert