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Israeli medical interns conduct medical experiments on Palestinian prisoners

Headline: “Medical mistakes are not coincidental, but intentional, and Israel’s doctors are training on prisoners.”
     “The [PA] Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs called attention to the medical mistakes that are being made on prisoners in the occupation prisons. The ministry said in its report that what are referred to as ‘mistakes’ have over the years become deliberate, according to observations and prisoners’ testimonies. [This] demonstrates disregard for the lives and health of sick prisoners, and care for them lacks any medical or professional responsibility…
The report emphasized that most doctors working in the [Israel] Prison Service are interns who have not received [their] medical license but are sent after finishing university to train in the prisons without any supervision. These interns carry out their work in prison clinics and interrogation or holding center clinics. This leads to many medical mistakes made on prisoners by the interns, who have turned the prisoners’ bodies into a field experiment and tools for scientific research…
In addition, the report said that no distinction can be made between the increase in medical mistakes made on prisoners in the occupation prisons and between the medical experiments being performed on them, as exposed by [former] Israeli MP Dalia Itzik in 1997, and the [Israeli] Health Ministry’s testing various medications on prisoners, along with its authorizing Israeli pharmaceutical companies to do the same. At that time [1997], it was reported that thousands of such pharmaceutical tests were conducted secretly on prisoners’ bodies.”

Note: This is not the first time the PA has claimed that former Speaker of Israeli Parliament and MP Dalia Itzik asserted that Israel conducts medical experiments on Palestinian prisoners. Reporting on this libel in 2008, PMW checked with then Israeli Parliament Speaker Dalia Itzik and the Ministry of Health. The following are their responses:
Office of Israeli Parliament Speaker Dalia Itzik: "[Israeli Parliament] Knesset Speaker Itzik never made the statements attributed to her. Speaker Itzik is certain that incidents of this kind do not occur in Israel; this is not how Israel conducts itself." [2007]
Ministry of Health's Response: "Clinical testing on prisoners in prison was never approved, never performed, and is most certainly not taking place at present." [2007]

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