Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-sjtt6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-06T18:37:33.308Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Public Health, Racial Tensions, and Body Politic: Mass Ringworm Irradiation in Israel, 1949–1960

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Extract

The BiDil affair brought once again to the fore questions of race and medicine. As discussed in other essays in this collection, the emergence of BiDil as the first medication approved and marketed for treating specific racial groups raises important questions for medicine and society: How are race and ethnicity framing our understanding of health and illness? Should treatment decisions be based on the race and ethnicity of patients? Should we encourage the development of race-specific medical treatments in order to reduce health disparities? Or is this approach dangerous, and can it lead to unwanted consequences including racial stigmatization? These questions are not new, and since the introduction of race as a scientific construct in the late-19th century, race has played an important part in the history of medicine, most notoriously during World War II and the Holocaust. Yet the identification of race medicine with Nazi science tends to obscure the vast use of race as a medical construct by a wide range of medical scientists and practitioners across the political spectrum. In many instances, racial minorities were preoccupied with race medicine in order to promote the health of their own communities. One such group was that of Jewish physicians.

Type
Symposium
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

On public health and its importance in the Zionist context, see Davidovitch, N. and Shvarts, S., “Health and Hegemony: Preventive Medicine, Immigration and the Israeli Melting Pot,” Israel Studies 9, no. 2 (2004): 150179; Davidovitch, N. and Seidelman, R., “Herzl's Altneuland: Zionist Utopia, Medical Science and Public Health,” Korot: The Israel Journal of the History of Medicine and Science 17 (2004): 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The exact number of irradiated children is unknown. It is clear that previous estimations, based mainly on Professor Baruch Modan's epidemiological investigations that put the numbers close to 20,000, were too conservative. Part of the reason is related to the fact that many children were irradiated abroad and that Modan was not fully aware of Arab irradiated children.Google Scholar
For the classical description of ringworm irradiation methods, see Kienbock, R., “Uber Radiotherapie der Haarerkrankungen,” [Radiotherapy of hair illnesses] Arch. Dermatol. Syph. Wien. 83 (1907): 77111; Adamson, H., “A Simplified Method of X-ray Application for the Cure of Ringworm of the Scalp: Kienbock's Method,” The Lancet 1 (1909): 1378–1380.Google Scholar
The Compensation for Victims of Ringworm Law, 1994 S.H. 1478.Google Scholar
See also Davidovitch, N. and Margalit, A., “Public Health Law and Traumatic Collective Experiences,” in Sarat, A., Davidovitch, N., and Alberstein, M., eds., Trauma and Memory: Reading, Healing, and Making Law (Stanford University Press, 2007): 119167.Google Scholar
For a recent summary of these arguments, see Falk, R., Zionism and the Biology of the Jews [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2006).Google Scholar
Id. On the various medical reactions to the “Jewish problem” — both Zionist and non-Zionist — see Efron, J. M., Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors & Race Science in Fin-de-Si cle Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994). On the rise of “Jewish” social sciences during the turn of the 20th century, see Hart, M. B., Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
See, for example, Orbach, A., “Russian Jewish History,” Modern Judaism 10, no. 3 (1990): 325342; Nathans, B., Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See Efron, , supra note 7; Hart, , supra note 7.Google Scholar
The first major irradiation campaign among Jews was conducted by the American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC), an American Jewish philanthropic organization established in 1914. Eight X-ray centers were established in 1921 in Poland, and about 20,000 children were irradiated in the next few years. See Favus, , Medico-Sanitary Department, Warsaw, Poland, Box 371, American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York.Google Scholar
On the Israeli health services in its first years of statehood, see Grushka, T., Health Services in Israel: A Ten Years Survey, 1948–1958, Ministry of Health, Jerusalem, 1959.Google Scholar
See Davidovitch, and Shvarts, , supra note 1, at 150–179.Google Scholar
See Kraut, A. K., Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes and the Immigrant Menace (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Markel, H., Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Fairchild, A. L., Science at the Borders: Immigrant Medical Inspection and the Shaping of the Modern Industrial Labor Force (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.)Google Scholar
See Richards, H. M., “The Control of Ringworm in School Children,” Public Health: The Journal of the Society of Medical Officers of Health 21 (1908): 274277; Turner, J. P., Ringworm and Its Successful Treatment (Philadelphia: F. A. Davis Company, 1921); Dillaha, C. J., “What Is the Best Way to Treat Ringworm of the Scalp?” Journal of the Arkansas Medical Society 51, no. 3 (1955): 266–271; Rosenthal, T., “Perspectives in Ringworm of the Scalp: Treatment through the Ages,” Archives of Dermatology 82, no. 1 (1960): 851–856.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
For several important public health articles and books dealing with ringworm, see id. (Turner); id. (Dillaha).Google Scholar
See Die Entstehung der Gesellschaft OSE und ihre ersten Massnahmen [The origin of the OSE organization and its first measures] (Berlin: Verband fuer Gesundhetisschutz der Juden OSE, 1925): at 7.Google Scholar
“Wegen oisraten di krankeit ‘parekh’ bei iden,” [On the liquidation of the disease “Parekh” among the Jews] Volksgezunr 2 (March 1923): 1.Google Scholar
On the use and abuse of X-rays as a medical treatment in general, see Hayter, C. R. R., “The Clinic as Laboratory: The Case of Radiation Therapy, 1896–1920,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 72, no. 4 (1998): 663688; Herzig, R., “In the Name of Science: Suffering, Sacrifice, and the Formation of American Roentgenology,” American Quarterly 53, no. 4 (2001): 563–589.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See Davidovitch, and Margalit, , supra note 5, at 129.Google Scholar
See Hadassah Medical Organization, Twenty Years of Medical Services in Palestine, 1918–1938, report issued by the Hadassah Medical Organization, May 9, 1939 (Jerusalem: Achvah Co-op Printing Press Ltd., 1940): At 110–111, 182.Google Scholar
Borowy, I. and Davidovitch, N., “Health in Palestine: 1850–2000,” Dynamis 25 (2005): 315327.Google Scholar
See, for example, Williams, D. I., Marten, R. H., and Sarkany, I., “Preliminary Communication: Oral Treatment of Ringworm with Griseofulvin,” The Lancet 272, no. 7058 (1958): 12121213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Modan, B., Editorial, “An Increase of Thyroid Tumors Ahead?” [Ribui Shel Se'etot Balutot Hatris Baderech?] Harefuah 88, no. 11 (1975): 541.Google Scholar
See Modan, B., Baidatz, D., Mart, H., Steinitz, R., and Levin, S. G., “Radiation-Induced Head and Neck Tumours,” The Lancet 1, no. 7852 (February 23, 1974): 277279. The same Modan wrote years later in an editorial titled “A Local Blood Libel” on the false accusation of the health care system in practicing prejudice and discrimination toward “Oriental” immigrants, especially related to the accusation of taking Yemenite children for adoption without the knowledge of their parents who were told that they had died. See Modan, B., “A Local Blood Libel,” [Alilat Dam Mekomit] Harefuah 131, nos. 5–6 (1996): 168–169. Modan's estimation of about 20,000 was clearly wrong, as he was not aware of many children irradiated in transit camps outside Israel and of Israeli Arabs who were also screened and irradiated; see reference note 2. Personal communication with Dr. Sigal Sadezki, Head of Epidemiology of Cancer Unit, Gertner Institute, Sheba Medical Center.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See Davidovitch, and Margalit, , supra note 19, at 132.Google Scholar
For two recent analyses of these issues, see Shenhav, Y., The Arab Jews: Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006); Shalom Chetrit, S., ha-Ma’avak ha-mizrahi be-Israel:, 1948–2003 [Mizrahi Struggle in Israel, 1948–2003] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2004).Google Scholar
The movie “The Ringworm Children,” directed by David Belachsun and Asher Hamias, depicts the story of the irradiation with interviews with several activists from the Ringworm Victims Assocation. The movie, which won a prize at the Haifa International Film Festival in 2003, deals with what the producers called the “Holocaust” of those irradiated.Google Scholar
Sociological research has provided abundant evidence as to the existence of numerous factors that delay and even prevent the filing of lawsuits by victims; see May, M. L. and Stengel, D. B., “Who Sues Their Doctors? How Patients Handle Medical Grievances,” Law & Society Review 105 (1990): 24.Google Scholar
In dismissing some of the tort claims, the court ruled that where irradiation had been performed by the Jewish Agency or the Health Funds, the plaintiff had no cause of action against the State. See Motion (Haifa) 356/95 The Jewish Agency v. Turgeman, 96 (2) Tek-Mach 781. This reasoning is questionable, as the actions of the Jewish Agency abroad in assisting immigrants to immigrate or the actions of the Health Funds among new immigrants in Israel were all performed to a great extent on behalf of the State.Google Scholar
The Compensation for Victims of Ringworm Law, 1994 S.H. 1478.Google Scholar
This view was most eloquently presented in the movie “The Ringworm Children,” supra note 28, as well as in some articles published in Israeli daily journals. See, for example, Dayan, A., “Ringworm Compensation? Only If It Is a Deadly Tumor,” Haaretz, July 30, 2004, available at <https://www.haaretz.co.il/> (last visited May 29, 2008).+(last+visited+May+29,+2008).>Google Scholar