Dr. Michael Kalin

By Dan Laxer
The Suburban

A Montreal doctor has resigned in very public protest from the College of Family Physicians of Canada over an article in their journal that, he feels, is in praise of terrorists.

Dr. Michael Kalin of Santé Kildare in Cote St. Luc posted on Facebook last Thursday that “after careful reflection and correspondence with the leadership at the CFPC, it became clear that the organization no longer represents my values.”

Kalin’s anger stems from an article in the February edition of Canadian Family Physician. The medical journal “is the official publication of the College of Family Physicians of Canada,” according to its website.

The article, “a political and terrorist-praising puff-piece,” Kalin calls it, is written by Nisrine Makarem, an MD, and assistant professor of clinical family medicine at the American University in Beirut. The Day the Pagers Exploded chronicles the aftermath of the Israeli mission of last September 17 in which thousands of pagers armed with miniscule explosives detonated in the hands and pockets of Hezbollah operatives, killing 10 and injuring many others.

Makarem was working that day in the Emergency Department (ED) of the American University of Beirut Medical Centre. Her article recounts the injuries that apparently overwhelmed the ED.

But her last paragraph is the source of the consternation not just of Kalin, but of other physicians who either commented on the article, or registered their anger with the College through letters and a petition.

Makarem wrote that she “was struck by the composure of the patients and their families.” She added “I struggle to find the right words to describe the scene: strength, resilience, denial, endurance, faith, indoctrination; perhaps a mix of all these. Whatever it was, it is something that deserves to be shared with the world.”

Her patients, Kalin points out, were Hezbollah fighters. Hezbollah has been designated a terrorist group in Canada since 2002.

He says he accepts that the journal operates with editorial independence. “But what really, really offended me,” he says, “was that (the article) was submitted by a non-Canadian physician regarding non-Canadian patients, had nothing to do with family medicine, and beyond that the author very covertly neglects to mention that her patients are in fact recognized terrorists.”

He had hoped the College would see that Makarem’s piece has no place in the journal. What he had asked and hoped for was a complete retraction.

The College, he tells The Suburban, is a national body that’s supposed to speak on behalf of all family doctors in Canada, “for our interests, for our patients.” He questions why the article was included in the journal even though “it meets none of the mission criteria of the journal or of the College itself.”

The Canadian Federation of Jewish Medical Associations was made aware of the article by its members from across Canada. Dr. Lior Bibas, president of the Association des Médecins Juifs du Québec (AMJQ) agreed with Kalin that the CFPC should have done a better job of acknowledging “the significant pain and distress experienced by a large number of Canadian Jewish family physicians as a result of this article.” He adds that he has heard from physicians and patients – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – “who do not understand why the official journal for Canadian family doctors has published an article that they read as glorifying Hezbollah.”

CFPC leadership claims that there is nothing they can do. In a comment, Executive Directors Michael Allan and Eric Mang wrote that “the article neither violates the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines for the conduct of journals nor does the article meet recognized criteria for retraction.”

Kalin called the College’s response “complete cowardice.” They chose to stay silent, he says.

“Medical journals should focus on medicine,” he added, and not on a conflict happening thousands of miles away.

Kalin assures his patients that his resignation from the CFPC in no way affects his standing as a physician. n