JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH : THE LANCET EDITOR RELENTS ON MEDICAL JOURNAL’S UNBALANCED ATTACKS ON ISRAEL
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Health/The-Lancet-editor-relents-on-medical-journals-unbalanced-attacks-on-Israel-377937 During Gaza war, The Lancet published a 1,600-word “Open letter for the people in Gaza” that aroused a wave of protest among advocates of Israeli around the world. The Lancet editor Prof. Richard Horton – who has been accused for many years by pro-Israeli groups of being unfair to Israel and even “anti-Semitic” for the politics he has allowed to appear in the medical journal – seems to have repented. At the end of his three-day visit with senior researchers and physicians at Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center, Horton said his visit to Israel was “a turning point for me and my relationship with this region.” Horton promised to write positively in the next edition of the British journal next week. The outcome of his visit thus holds a promise for new academic and medical collaborations that Horton has promised to support. “I am proud and humbled to be here... I’ve learned a great deal: Rambam as a model of the partnership between Jews and Arabs; Rambam as a center offering an open hand to the people of Palestine; and Rambam as a place with a unique vision for a peaceful, productive, and diverse future among peoples,” Horton said. Horton, who delivered a lecture to the Haifa doctors on Thursday, said he visits the Middle East yearly and sometimes several times a year because of his concern for the region. His three days of seminars and meetings with senior researchers and physicians at Rambam and the Technion’s Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine was initiated by Prof. Karl Skorecki, Rambam’s director of medical research, and director-general Prof. Rafi Beyar, a world-famous interventional cardiologist. Horton’s visit included tours of some of Rambam’s medical units, a series of medical and ethical lectures, discussions, debates, and visits to Isifiya and Acre. He also spent an intensive day that included a discussion on science and medicine as a catalyst for peaceful coexistence, which was coordinated by Prof. Zaher Azzam, head of Rambam’s internal medicne B and vice dean of the Technion’s medical faculty. Prof. Asa Kasher, a renowned ethics philosopher, spoke on the ethics of armed conflict and responsible scholarly journalism. Horton and The Lancet – one of the world’s leading general medical journals – published during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza a 1,600- word “Open letter for the people in Gaza” that aroused a wave of protest among advocates of Israel around the world. It had been written by Drs. Paola Manduca, Iain Chalmers, Derek Summerfield, Mads Gilbert, and Swee Ang on behalf of 24 signatories. “On the basis of our ethics and practice, we are denouncing what we witness in the aggression of Gaza by Israel. We ask our colleagues, old and young professionals, to denounce this Israeli aggression. We challenge the perversity of a propaganda that justifies the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre, a so-called defensive aggression. In reality it is a ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity,” the letter went. The journal article made no mention of the incessant rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists, the placing of rocket launchers in schools and hospitals to magnify the damage of defensive attacks or the bloodbath in Syria and other parts of the world. It took weeks of protest by pro-Israeli letter writers until Horton’s journal published some of their reactions, which covered much less space than the original letter. In a potentially charged atmosphere, the discussion at Rambam was handled with the utmost of respect and professionalism, with Kasher and Horton shaking hands and continuing their discussion after the lecture had ended. There was also a debate on the subject “Publications which promote political agendas have no place in scientific and medical journalism and academics should refrain from publishing in such journals.”
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