There has been much written recently about BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions) against Israel following Professor Stephen Hawkings’ decision to cancel his appearance at the Israeli Presidential Conference in June. My response is to provide an update to members of the BDS club of my previous articles here and here on the stupidity and futility of boycotting the Jewish State. For my sources to this latest blog, I am using only medical news articles since January 2013 – i.e. the last four and a half months. The following is just a small selection – a more extensive list will be posted on my blogsite in the next week or so.
Dear BDS member. By boycotting Israeli treatments and research you will cause the deaths of millions of children from Hepatitis B because they couldn’t have SciGen’s Sci-B-Vac only third-generation Hep B virus vaccine. You would have to destroy the research by Hadassah Medical Organization that located the gene that causes recurrent life-threatening infections and bone marrow failure in children. The babies born deformed and blind from ectodermal dysplasia cannot touch the gene therapy that Israel’s Technion has developed. Children paralysed by the genetic brain disease Peripheral Neuropathy will just have to whistle for the medication developed by doctors at Hadassah Medical Center – except of course that they can’t whistle.
BDS members obviously have no wish to cure cancer.
- You would boycott Hebrew University Professor Alexander Levitzki’s award-winning cancer therapies.
- You would dispatch Technion’s diagnosis breath test for lung cancer and stomach cancer to the garbage, despite the fact an Israeli Arab invented it.
- Gamida Cell’s Nicord and StemEx treatments for blood cancers, leukemia and lymphoma are “No No”s.
- So is Biocancell Therapeutics’s new treatment for bladder cancer.
- Melanoma (skin cancer) sufferers can forget the successful T-cell treatment at Sheba Medical Center.
- You must not treat patients with aggressive cancers if it requires the multi-antibody combination discovered by Israel’s Weizmann Institute.
- Ban any work on the Hebrew University’s discovery of a mutated protein breast cancer signal. Then when you developed breast cancer your surgeons would just have to cut away healthy flesh with the tumor, as they would not be allowed to use the MarginProbe breast cancer test from Israel’s Dune Medical.
- Children will contract kidney cancer because you prohibited Sheba Medical Center’s treatment of the cancer stem cells that fuel the growth of Wilms’ tumors.
- Finally your worst nightmare is to be injected with Weizmann Institute’s microscopic device that searches the body for genetic malfunctions in the cells.
BDS members have no heart, no brain and no spine, otherwise why would they want to boycott Israeli cardiology, neurology and spinal treatments?
Heartless BDS members would need to avoid
- Lev-El Diagnostics’ heart monitor algorithm that identifies heart disease in one hour instead of two days.
- Enopace Biomedical’s endovascular micro-stimulator, which acts as a pacemaker for the arteries.
- Or Dr. Shai Efrati, of Tel Aviv University, whose Oxygen enrichment therapy improves stroke patients even 3 years after their last attack.
- And they would never use one of InspireMD’s new self-expanding stroke-preventing stents.
Brainless BDS activists can ignore Israel’s latest neurological discoveries and innovations such as:
- How regulating the protein Calphotin can prevent Alzheimer’s disease
- Why the sugar substitute mannitol protects the brain against Parkinson’s
- Deep Brain Stimulation which treats Parkinson’s disease and helps smokers to quit
- The pre-natal diagnostic tool for prevention of genetic mental retardation
- BioControl Medical’s system that reduces epileptic episodes by half.
- Alcobra’s ADHD medication, which is safer than Ritalin and has few side effects.
- And certainly Weizmann’s research into how the brain repairs itself.
Spineless BDS bigots will have to forgo
- Argo Medical’s ReWalk exoskeleton for paraplegics, for which Version 2 was shown to US President Obama; IDF paraplegic Radi Kaiuf used it to complete the Tel Aviv 10km race in less than 4 hours.
- Mazor Robotics’s robotic spinal surgery which has just been approved for sale in Australia
- Premia Spine’s artificial titanium joint that restores mobility to sufferers of spinal degeneration
- Bonus Biogroup, which is generating new bones from a patients’ own fat cells.
- Cartilage regeneration from a CartiHeal Agili-C implant
- Diagnosis of walking problems using SensoGo’s gait analysis device
Finally, I can understand that you BDS people have no feelings for humanity. But surely you must care for animals? So please don’t boycott the first vaccine effective against canine monocytic ehrlichiosis (CME), a sometimes fatal tick-borne disease in dogs. I realise that two Hebrew University veterinary scientists developed it, but you can’t let a poor animal suffer, can you?
Next week, I will post a feature on some of the Palestinian Arabs, Syrians, Iraqis etc. who have benefited from not boycotting Israel.
Michael Ordman writes a free weekly newsletter containing Good News stories about Israel.
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