- Email: [email protected]
SOVIET PHYSICIANS DENIED EXIT VISAS
690
SOVIET PHYSICIANS DENIED EXIT VISAS
SIR,-International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War has received well-deserved attention for its efforts to forge links between Western and Soviet physicians in a cooperative effort to prevent nuclear war. By focusing on that issue IPPNW’s leaders have avoided areas where agreement would be more difficult. Western doctors will be especially concerned about the mistreatment of Soviet physicians denied exit visas, the so-called "refuseniks". On a recent trip to Moscow and Leningrad we met Soviet Jewish refusenik medical researchers and clinicians and document the situation of two of them in detail. Dr Joseph Irlin, then 45 years old, a physician and senior scientist at the Moscow Cancer Research Centre, applied, with his wife, for permission to emigrate to Israel in April, 1979. He had published over a hundred papers on viral carcinogenesis and tumour immunology. His wife, Svetlana, was investigating the immune system in viral hepatitis. In 1979 more than 50 000 Soviet Jews were allowed to emigrate, but the Irlins’ application was turned down. Irlin was later told unofficially that he, among others, was being refused permission to emigrate because "you have degrees". He has since been barred from working in a research institute. On June 30, 1986, he wrote to participants at the 14th International Cancer Congress, held in Budapest in August: "All my adult life (that is more than 20 years) I’ve worked in the field of experimental oncology and, as it must be clear to you, I’ve never had anything to do with any state or military secrets... It is already more than 7 years that I have been deprived of any possibility to work in the field that I devoted all my adult life ... In this letter I appeal to you, my colleagues—oncologists from USSR and Hungary, to all the participants of the 14th ICC. I turn to you for help-I am perishing as a scientist, as a person capable of creative work, as a specialist... I have no other hope left except the hope for your help and assistance." Irlin’s application to leave the Soviet Union has been followed by a deliberate attempt to disrupt his career, and earlier appeals on his behalf (in Nature in 1982 and 1984) have been unavailing. On Sept 1, Dr Irlin was on the 19th day of a hunger strike, planned to coincide with the Budapest Congress. Dr Joseph Zaretsky was 35 and also doing oncovirological research in Moscow when he and his family applied for permission to emigrate to Israel in 1978. His wife, also a physician, worked at the Institute of Neurology, and neither had ever had access to secret or military work. Permission to emigrate was refused, purportedly because of the secret work of a close relative of his wife. In a recent biographical summary, Zaretsky writes: "After applying for a visa I had to give up my position under the pressure of the management. From 1978 to 1982 my wife and I had no job in spite of many attempts to get some. Since 1982I have been working as an ordinary practitioner in an outpatients’ clinic. My wife also got a job in an outpatients’ clinic as a neurologist, but she was dismissed when we had to renew her application for an exit visa." In 1977 Zaretsky had concluded a contract with a publishing house to write a book on the molecular biology of oncogenic viruses. He wrote it in 1978. "However, the moment I applied for permission to leave the country the publishers refused to publish the book". In 1981 his sister died in Israel. "I asked the Soviet authorities to let me go to the funeral but they refused, cynically saying that it would be possible if my sister had died in any country but in Israel". We also met other Soviet Jewish refusenik physicians practising in outpatient clinics. Although they had been more successful than Irlin or the Zaretskys at keeping their jobs, or at least jobs in their specialties, they have all been denied permission to emigrate for no apparent reason. The immediate deprivation of their posts and the authorities’ refusal to allow them to pursue their former careers suggest that they are being punished for submitting a visa
application. Of the many recent violations of human rights by the Soviet Union few have so prominently involved physicians. The treatment of psychiatrists and others opposed to the political abuse of psychiatry led, as a result of worldwide publicity, to the resignation of the Soviet Union from the World Psychiatric Association in 1983.1 We believe that physicians in the West should take every
opportunity to support colleagues in the Soviet Union who, besides being denied the chance to live in the country of their choice, have experienced punitive suppression of their professional development. Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AF
Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London WC2 1. Bloch
PAUL ROBINSON
MARK BERGER
S, Reddaway P. Soviet psychiatric abuse. London: Victor Gollancz, 1984
**Dr Vladimir Brodsky, a surgeon who was refused an exit visa in 1979, may soon be allowed to leave the Soviet Union with his wife and child. He had been sentenced to three years in a labour camp in August, 1985, for attending a peace demonstration. The Medical Campaign against Nuclear Weapons, one of the two UK affiliates to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, has, like IPPNW, usually distanced itself from general questions of human rights. All the same a letter from MCANW’s president, Prof John Humphrey, to IPPNW’s co-president Prof Evgenuyi I. Chazov almost certainly played an important part in securing Dr Brodsky’s release.-ED. L.
FROM NAZI HOLOCAUST TO NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST
SIR,-Dr Hanauske-Abel (Aug 2, p 271) leaves hardly anybody untouched. The attitudes and behaviour of many German physicians during the period of Nazi terror were dreadful and the recounting of horrible details from that era will indeed serve as a lesson to the younger generation. But what is the lesson to be learned by doctors? Hanauske-Abel asks: "In 1986, will anything change if the physicians’ organisations internationally resist the nuclear arms build-up in East and West?" and concludes by saying that "We must attack the evil where it is most powerful. Do not hide your cowardice under the cloak of sophistication. Everybody is in a position to contribute to the fall of the nuclear system." He reaches this conclusion after stating: "In these days, the medical community in East and West is under pressure to practise politics in a small scale, to accept the State’s doctrine of nuclear deterrence, to translate this genocidal theory into the terminology of disaster medicine." In communist dictatorships doctors are certainly under pressure to accept the State’s doctrine whereas in the Western democracies we are free to practise medicine according to our own ethical standards. The lesson to be learned therefore is not to fight any particular arms system, as, for instance, proposed by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), but to fight the political systems where pressure is brought to bear on physicians to practise medicine according to the rules set by a political party. The danger is that IPPNW’s endeavours may confuse many colleagues in our democracies by diverting them from the roots of the problem. We will have learned the lesson of the Nazi holocaust only if we found International Physicians to Practise Medicine in Freedom (IPPMF). Division of Oncology, Department of Medicine,
University Hospital CH-8091 Zurich, Switzerland
CHRISTIAN SAUTER
OBSTETRICS AND GYNAECOLOGY AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL COLLEGE
SIR,-Both before and after the report of the Beaumont inquiry and the welcome restoration of Mrs Wendy Savage’s honorary consultant contract by Tower Hamlets District Health Authority, there has been much criticism in the press of Prof J. G. Grudzinskas, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology of this
college. Among other allegations, it is said that Professor Grudzinskas told a colleague after taking up his post that he intended to get rid of
SOVIET PHYSICIANS DENIED EXIT VISAS
SIR,-International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War has received well-deserved attention for its efforts to forge links between Western and Soviet physicians in a cooperative effort to prevent nuclear war. By focusing on that issue IPPNW’s leaders have avoided areas where agreement would be more difficult. Western doctors will be especially concerned about the mistreatment of Soviet physicians denied exit visas, the so-called "refuseniks". On a recent trip to Moscow and Leningrad we met Soviet Jewish refusenik medical researchers and clinicians and document the situation of two of them in detail. Dr Joseph Irlin, then 45 years old, a physician and senior scientist at the Moscow Cancer Research Centre, applied, with his wife, for permission to emigrate to Israel in April, 1979. He had published over a hundred papers on viral carcinogenesis and tumour immunology. His wife, Svetlana, was investigating the immune system in viral hepatitis. In 1979 more than 50 000 Soviet Jews were allowed to emigrate, but the Irlins’ application was turned down. Irlin was later told unofficially that he, among others, was being refused permission to emigrate because "you have degrees". He has since been barred from working in a research institute. On June 30, 1986, he wrote to participants at the 14th International Cancer Congress, held in Budapest in August: "All my adult life (that is more than 20 years) I’ve worked in the field of experimental oncology and, as it must be clear to you, I’ve never had anything to do with any state or military secrets... It is already more than 7 years that I have been deprived of any possibility to work in the field that I devoted all my adult life ... In this letter I appeal to you, my colleagues—oncologists from USSR and Hungary, to all the participants of the 14th ICC. I turn to you for help-I am perishing as a scientist, as a person capable of creative work, as a specialist... I have no other hope left except the hope for your help and assistance." Irlin’s application to leave the Soviet Union has been followed by a deliberate attempt to disrupt his career, and earlier appeals on his behalf (in Nature in 1982 and 1984) have been unavailing. On Sept 1, Dr Irlin was on the 19th day of a hunger strike, planned to coincide with the Budapest Congress. Dr Joseph Zaretsky was 35 and also doing oncovirological research in Moscow when he and his family applied for permission to emigrate to Israel in 1978. His wife, also a physician, worked at the Institute of Neurology, and neither had ever had access to secret or military work. Permission to emigrate was refused, purportedly because of the secret work of a close relative of his wife. In a recent biographical summary, Zaretsky writes: "After applying for a visa I had to give up my position under the pressure of the management. From 1978 to 1982 my wife and I had no job in spite of many attempts to get some. Since 1982I have been working as an ordinary practitioner in an outpatients’ clinic. My wife also got a job in an outpatients’ clinic as a neurologist, but she was dismissed when we had to renew her application for an exit visa." In 1977 Zaretsky had concluded a contract with a publishing house to write a book on the molecular biology of oncogenic viruses. He wrote it in 1978. "However, the moment I applied for permission to leave the country the publishers refused to publish the book". In 1981 his sister died in Israel. "I asked the Soviet authorities to let me go to the funeral but they refused, cynically saying that it would be possible if my sister had died in any country but in Israel". We also met other Soviet Jewish refusenik physicians practising in outpatient clinics. Although they had been more successful than Irlin or the Zaretskys at keeping their jobs, or at least jobs in their specialties, they have all been denied permission to emigrate for no apparent reason. The immediate deprivation of their posts and the authorities’ refusal to allow them to pursue their former careers suggest that they are being punished for submitting a visa
application. Of the many recent violations of human rights by the Soviet Union few have so prominently involved physicians. The treatment of psychiatrists and others opposed to the political abuse of psychiatry led, as a result of worldwide publicity, to the resignation of the Soviet Union from the World Psychiatric Association in 1983.1 We believe that physicians in the West should take every
opportunity to support colleagues in the Soviet Union who, besides being denied the chance to live in the country of their choice, have experienced punitive suppression of their professional development. Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AF
Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London WC2 1. Bloch
PAUL ROBINSON
MARK BERGER
S, Reddaway P. Soviet psychiatric abuse. London: Victor Gollancz, 1984
**Dr Vladimir Brodsky, a surgeon who was refused an exit visa in 1979, may soon be allowed to leave the Soviet Union with his wife and child. He had been sentenced to three years in a labour camp in August, 1985, for attending a peace demonstration. The Medical Campaign against Nuclear Weapons, one of the two UK affiliates to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, has, like IPPNW, usually distanced itself from general questions of human rights. All the same a letter from MCANW’s president, Prof John Humphrey, to IPPNW’s co-president Prof Evgenuyi I. Chazov almost certainly played an important part in securing Dr Brodsky’s release.-ED. L.
FROM NAZI HOLOCAUST TO NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST
SIR,-Dr Hanauske-Abel (Aug 2, p 271) leaves hardly anybody untouched. The attitudes and behaviour of many German physicians during the period of Nazi terror were dreadful and the recounting of horrible details from that era will indeed serve as a lesson to the younger generation. But what is the lesson to be learned by doctors? Hanauske-Abel asks: "In 1986, will anything change if the physicians’ organisations internationally resist the nuclear arms build-up in East and West?" and concludes by saying that "We must attack the evil where it is most powerful. Do not hide your cowardice under the cloak of sophistication. Everybody is in a position to contribute to the fall of the nuclear system." He reaches this conclusion after stating: "In these days, the medical community in East and West is under pressure to practise politics in a small scale, to accept the State’s doctrine of nuclear deterrence, to translate this genocidal theory into the terminology of disaster medicine." In communist dictatorships doctors are certainly under pressure to accept the State’s doctrine whereas in the Western democracies we are free to practise medicine according to our own ethical standards. The lesson to be learned therefore is not to fight any particular arms system, as, for instance, proposed by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), but to fight the political systems where pressure is brought to bear on physicians to practise medicine according to the rules set by a political party. The danger is that IPPNW’s endeavours may confuse many colleagues in our democracies by diverting them from the roots of the problem. We will have learned the lesson of the Nazi holocaust only if we found International Physicians to Practise Medicine in Freedom (IPPMF). Division of Oncology, Department of Medicine,
University Hospital CH-8091 Zurich, Switzerland
CHRISTIAN SAUTER
OBSTETRICS AND GYNAECOLOGY AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL COLLEGE
SIR,-Both before and after the report of the Beaumont inquiry and the welcome restoration of Mrs Wendy Savage’s honorary consultant contract by Tower Hamlets District Health Authority, there has been much criticism in the press of Prof J. G. Grudzinskas, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology of this
college. Among other allegations, it is said that Professor Grudzinskas told a colleague after taking up his post that he intended to get rid of