are missiles bad for your health?

Doctors attack Lancet owner's arms fair links
Polly Curtis, health correspondent
Friday March 23, 2007
The Guardian

The publishers of The Lancet are under fire from leading doctors who are complaining about their escalating involvement in arms fairs. Across three pages of today's edition the medical journal publishes letters from top doctors, led by the Royal College of Physicians, who say that Reed Elsevier's commercial interest in the arms trade undermines the journal's efforts to improve health worldwide.

The editors of the journal also call on their proprietor to drop its work with the defence industry, claiming that the association is damaging The Lancet's reputation. The Lancet's international advisory board is now considering an "organised campaign" against its own publisher.

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I work for doctors, and most of the time, it makes one bitter and cynical to be constantly reminded that most people become doctors not out of some humanistic impulse to heal, but because they can make a lot of money. So when this kind of thing happens, it warms my soul to know that sometimes, even doctors have principles and are willing to stand up for them. But here, some words of wisdom from one great doctor:

"In moments of great peril it is easy to muster a powerful response to moral stimuli; but for them to retain their effect requires the development of a consciousness in which there is a new priority of values."
- Che Guevara