{"id":493277,"date":"2026-06-15T03:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T03:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/493277\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T03:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T03:44:09","slug":"renowned-medical-journal-lancet-calls-to-suspend-israel-from-global-medical-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/493277\/","title":{"rendered":"Renowned medical journal Lancet calls to suspend Israel from global medical body"},"content":{"rendered":"

Renowned medical journal The Lancet has published a petition calling for the suspension of the Israel Medical Association<\/a> (IMA) from the World Medical Association (WMA).<\/p>\n

On Saturday, The Lancet published a petition by health organizations such as the People\u2019s Health Movement (PHM), Artsen voor Gaza (Doctors for Gaza), and the Health Advisory Council of the Jewish Voice for Peace<\/a> calling for the IMA to be suspended from the WMA over \u201cits failure to speak out against the genocide of Palestinians, the destruction of health-care infrastructure, and the torture and killing of health-care workers in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leslie London, Emeritus Professor of Public Health at the University of Cape Town and a member of PHM South Africa, told The Lancet that the IMA has \u201ccolluded in the unspeakable treatment of Palestinians during this war.\u201d<\/p>\n

The British Medical Association already suspended ties with the IMA in June 2025.<\/p>\n

WMA distances itself from calls to suspend Israel<\/p>\n

The WMA, however, told The Lancet that it stands against the exclusion of any of its members for the actions of their governments, as \u201cdoing so diminishes our ability to call out injustices and threatens shrinking the dialogue among physicians at this critical time when consensus in support of our medical ethics is so needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WebsiteWebsite of the Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal and one of the oldest of its kind, is seen on a laptop computer (illustrative) (credit: SHUTTERSTOCK)<\/p>\n

It also pointed out that the IMA is one of the founding members of the WMA and is a \u201cstrong advocate for WMA ethics and policies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the publication of the petition, Iranian-Jewish cardiologist Dr. Afshine Emrani wrote an open letter to The Lancet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a cardiologist. I\u2019m 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He listed things that the boycott would actually destroy, including PillCam (revolutionized GI diagnosis), ReWalk (robotic exoskeletons for paralyzed patients), and breakthrough AI diagnostics for cardiac imaging and cancer detection, all of which are developed in Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael has among the highest per-capita rates of medical innovation on earth. These technologies save lives in London, Johannesburg, S\u00e3o Paulo, and New York<\/a>. Suspending the IMA doesn\u2019t punish a government. It severs research collaborations and training partnerships.\u201d<\/p>\n

Votes for Israel to be kicked out while Iran, Russia, and North Korea remain<\/p>\n

Emrani also highlighted the double standards of singling out the IMA when the medical associations of Iran, North Korea, and Russia do not face similar boycotts. \u201cThe [Iranian] regime has executed physicians. Imprisoned doctors for treating protesters. Denied healthcare to political prisoners as policy. No petition. No Lancet article. No campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moment we expel medical bodies based on political litmus tests is the moment we destroy the neutrality that makes global medicine possible,\u201d he said. Emrani also noted that the WMA was established in 1947 mainly as a response to the atrocities committed by doctors in Nazi Germany during World War II.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time that The Lancet has come under fire for its publication of articles relating to Israel.<\/p>\n

Notably, in July 2024, the medical journal published a piece authored by doctors Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, and Salim Yusuf, which claimed that \u201cit is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the fact that it was designated as a \u201ccorrespondence\u201d or a letter to the editor rather than a peer-reviewed academic article, the article was disseminated en masse and shared by figures such as UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Three days after the publication, one of the writers, McKee, retracted from the digits he co-provided in his piece, claiming that they were \u201cpurely illustrative\u201d and that \u201cour piece has been greatly misquoted and misinterpreted.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Renowned medical journal The Lancet has published a petition calling for the suspension of the Israel Medical Association…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[971,163,521,4144,85,46,89096,2409],"class_list":["post-493277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-doctor","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-hospital","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-medical-association","tag-medicine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}