An open letter from a cardiologist to The Lancet.
I'm a cardiologist. I'm an Iranian Jew. And what The Lancet just published is a disgrace to the profession I've dedicated my life to.
Today, one of the world's most prestigious medical journals published an article platforming a campaign to suspend the Israeli Medical Association from the World Medical Association — the global body founded after World War II to ensure physicians would never again be complicit in state violence.
The stated grounds: the IMA allegedly failed to sufficiently condemn the destruction of Gaza's health system.
I need to say what thousands of physicians around the world are thinking but afraid to say publicly.
This is the politicization of medicine. And it will cost patients their lives.
Let me start with what The Lancet chose not to mention.
The World Medical Association itself opposes this suspension. The WMA has stated explicitly that it believes in dialogue and cooperation among all 117 member medical associations, and that suspending members because of the actions of their governments would undermine its ability to promote medical ethics globally.
The Israeli Medical Association has called these accusations "false or contested claims presented as facts." The IMA has advocated for humanitarian aid into Gaza, demanded protections for medical facilities, and upheld principles of medical neutrality. It is a professional medical body — not a branch of the Israeli government.
And here is the fact that apparently doesn't fit the narrative: Hamas systematically used hospitals as military infrastructure — tunnel entrances, command centers, weapons storage, and launching positions. This is extensively documented by multiple independent sources. The weaponization of medical facilities by a combatant force is one of the gravest violations of medical neutrality that exists — and The Lancet's campaign says nothing about it.
Now let me tell you what Israeli medicine actually contributes to the world — because this is what the boycott would destroy.
The PillCam — a capsule-sized camera that revolutionized gastrointestinal diagnosis — developed in Israel. ReWalk — robotic exoskeletons enabling paralyzed patients to walk — developed in Israel. Breakthrough AI diagnostic platforms for cardiac imaging, cancer detection, and pathology. Advanced cardiac technologies I use in my own practice to save lives.
Israel has among the highest per-capita rates of medical innovation on earth, with contributions to oncology, cardiology, neurology, and emergency medicine that benefit patients in hospitals on every continent — including in nations whose governments are now calling for this boycott.
Suspending the IMA doesn't punish a government. It severs research collaborations, breaks training partnerships, and isolates physicians whose innovations are actively saving lives in London, Johannesburg, São Paulo, and New York. The patients who lose are not Israeli. They're everyone.
Here's the question The Lancet apparently doesn't want to answer:
Where is the petition to suspend medical associations from countries with documented mass torture, systematic execution of dissidents, imprisonment of physicians, and zero independent press? Where is the campaign against the medical associations of Iran, Syria, North Korea, China, or Russia?
I was born in Iran. The Iranian regime has executed physicians. Imprisoned medical professionals for treating protesters. Denied healthcare to political prisoners as policy. Operated a medical system in which the government dictates what doctors can and cannot say publicly.
No petition. No Lancet article. No campaign for suspension.
When the standard is applied to one country and one country only — the world's single Jewish state — among 117 WMA member nations, the word for that is not "medical ethics."
The Lancet has a history here. This is not the first time the journal has platformed one-sided activist campaigns against Israel while maintaining a veneer of scientific neutrality. A medical journal's credibility depends entirely on its commitment to evidence, impartiality, and the separation of science from political activism. Every time The Lancet crosses that line, it degrades the trust that physicians and patients place in peer-reviewed publishing.
Medicine must heal, not divide.
The WMA was created so that the medical profession would never again be weaponized by political ideology. Expelling a member nation's medical association because activists demand ideological compliance is the exact inversion of that founding principle.
The WMA Congress meets in Rotterdam this October. The right response to this petition is simple: reject it. Unanimously. Without equivocation.
Medical associations should be held to standards of medical ethics — applied equally, to all 117 members, based on evidence, not political pressure campaigns.
As a physician who left a country where medicine was subjugated to political ideology — where doctors were tools of the state, not servants of their patients — I will say this as clearly as I can:
The moment we allow medical organizations to be expelled 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.
— Dr. Afshine Emrani, MD, FACC
Cardiologist. Jewish American-Iranian
Found at Fecesbook.
It would be so much easier for them if The Lancet just admitted "We hate Jews"
