Medicine and war
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The Association of Israeli and Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights was established during the first months of the uprising, against the background of a severe situation in which people were killed and wounded daily. AIPPHR works for the protection of human dignity and human life; defending physicians and patients in a state of political conflict out of loyalty to the principles of universal morality which constitute an inseparable part of the medical profession. This report, which is the result of months of research and investigation, is aimed, among other purposes, at bringing reliable information to the knowledge of the medical community in Israel and the Israeli Medical Association (IMA)--the body which organizes them. ⋯ Since the beginning of the uprising in the Occupied Territories, a new tendency has appeared; the use of medicine as an additional means of repression against the population. This means that medicine has been removed from the status of a basic human right and recruited as a means of punishment. This is a phenomenon which no physician or person of conscience can accept.