sábado, 18 de marzo de 2017

Over 800 medical personnel killed in Syrian war | BioEdge

Over 800 medical personnel killed in Syrian war





Over 800 medical personnel killed in Syrian war
     


A new report published in The Lancet presents a grim picture of humanitarian abuses in Syria. It claims that more than 800 healthcare workers have been killed in the country since the outbreak of a civil war in 2011.

The study estimated 814 medical personnel were killed between March 2011 and February 2017 -- a figure that may not capture many unreported deaths.

The report was prepared by a team of researchers from the American University of Beirut, in collaboration with The Lancet, and draws together data from dozens of organisations that have been monitoring the conflict.

The report’s authors write of what they call the “weaponisation of healthcare” in Syria, and suggest a series of “policy imperatives for international bodies”, such as “strengthening accountability towards protection of health workers”.

Karl Blanchet, director of the Health in Humanitarian Crises Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said the findings raise a serious issue which affects other countries in addition to Syria.

"Syria is just the tip of the iceberg. In Afghanistan and Yemen today, international humanitarian organizations ...report attacks on health facilities every week. Patients have been shot while traveling in ambulances in Colombia, ambulances are used in suicide attacks in Afghanistan, doctors are murdered in Somalia, and hospitals bombed in Afghanistan, Yemen and Libya,” he told Reuters.



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One of the star exhibits in the Royal College of Surgeons' Hunterian Museum of anatomy in London is the skeleton of Charles Byrne, an 18th Century Irishman who was about 8 feet tall. However, the museum is to close in May for renovations and there are calls to use the opportunity to remove or bury the remains. Does this make sense?
A celebrity in his day, Byrne died in 1783 of ill health and drink in London. He knew that John Hunter wanted to dissect him after his death, so he directed his friends to sink his body in a lead-lined casket in the English Channel. Alas, Hunter succeeded in stealing the body anyway and it eventually turned up in a display case.
Similar events darken the history of the Australian state of Tasmania. The last full-blood Aboriginal Tasmanian, William Lanne, died in 1869. Although the story is murky, it appears that before his funeral the Surgeon-General of the colony, William Crowther, stole his head for “scientific study” and someone else removed his hands and feet. There is no record of scientific studies. Crowther went on to become premier, and an impressive bronze statue of him was erected in the centre of the city.
The last full-blood Aboriginal woman in Tasmania, Truganini, was terrified that the same thing would happen to her and directed that her body be cremated. Her wishes were ignored and her skeleton ended up in a display in the Hobart Museum. It was finally cremated in 1976.
Nowadays body-snatching would not be tolerated (although the Hunterian Museum still refuses to remove Byrne’s body from display). But the notion that scientific curiosity is its own justification persists. University of Tasmania historian Stefan Petrow points out, that the fate of Lanne and Truganini demonstrate “the hegemony scientific knowledge sought to establish over fundamental human rights such as a decent burial”. Can’t the same thing be said about some aspects of stem cell research? 


Michael Cook
Editor
BioEdge



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A new report published in The Lancet presents a grim picture of humanitarian abuses in Syria.  
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Over 800 medical personnel killed in Syrian war

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