Thread by @afshineemrani

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An open letter to @TheLancet from an Iranian-Jewish cardiologist.
Today, one of the world's most prestigious medical journals published a campaign to suspend the Israeli Medical Association from the World Medical Association — the body founded after WWII to ensure physicians would never again be weaponized by political ideology.
I'm a cardiologist. I'm an Iranian Jew who grew up under a regime where medicine was subjugated to the state.
What The Lancet just did is a disgrace to my profession.
Here's what they published — and what they deliberately left out.

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What The Lancet didn't mention:
The World Medical Association itself opposes this suspension. The WMA stated explicitly that suspending members because of their governments' actions would undermine its ability to promote medical ethics globally.
The Israeli Medical Association has advocated for humanitarian aid into Gaza, demanded protections for hospitals, and called these accusations "false or contested claims presented as facts." The IMA is a professional medical body — not a branch of the Israeli government.
Hamas systematically used hospitals as military infrastructure — tunnel entrances, command centers, weapons storage. Extensively documented. One of the gravest violations of medical neutrality that exists.
The Lancet's campaign says nothing about it.

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What the boycott would actually destroy:
PillCam — revolutionized GI diagnosis. Developed in Israel.
ReWalk — robotic exoskeletons for paralyzed patients. Developed in Israel.
Breakthrough AI diagnostics for cardiac imaging and cancer detection used in hospitals on every continent.
Israel has among the highest per-capita rates of medical innovation on earth. These technologies save lives in London, Johannesburg, São Paulo, and New York.
Suspending the IMA doesn't punish a government. It severs research collaborations and training partnerships. The patients who lose aren't Israeli. They're everyone.

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Now the question The Lancet doesn't want to answer.
Where is the petition against the medical associations of Iran? Syria? North Korea? China? Russia?
I was born in Iran. The regime has executed physicians. Imprisoned doctors for treating protesters. Denied healthcare to political prisoners as policy.
No petition. No Lancet article. No campaign.
117 nations belong to the WMA. When the standard is applied to one country and one country only — the world's single Jewish state — the word for that is not "medical ethics."
I grew up inside a regime that weaponized medicine. I know exactly what the politicization of the profession looks like. This is it.

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The WMA Congress meets in Rotterdam this October to consider this petition.
The right response is simple: reject it. Unanimously.
Medicine must heal, not divide. Medical associations should be judged by standards of medical ethics — applied equally to all 117 members, based on evidence, not political pressure campaigns.
The moment we expel medical bodies based on political litmus tests is the moment we destroy the neutrality that makes global medicine possible.
Defend the IMA. Defend medical neutrality. Defend the principle that a physician's allegiance is to the patient — not to the mob.
The Lancet should be ashamed. And every physician who values science over activism should say so — loudly — before October.

@TheLancet Yes