Humans are inclined to see what they want to see. I reviewed the effects of a drug designed to improve memory, and concluded that the drug was highly effective. Unfortunately, a statistical analysis proved the drug was totally ineffective. It improved memory function about as well as pills that contained nothing but sugar. The numbers did not lie: my bias did.  Further confounding medical progress has been the enthusiasm of investigators. To establish the value of a drug to stop seizures in babies, I compared the results submitted by the investigator with the results recorded in the patient charts by his study manager. There was no overlap between the chart results and the submitted findings. The chart results proved the drug was useless. Again, the numbers did not lie, but the investigator did. He apparently wanted more contracts with the drug company sponsoring the anti-seizure medication and believed the company would sign him up for more studies if he helped the company prove their ineffective medicine appeared to be effective.
In medicine, the truth usually finds its way to the surface, despite the bias or dishonesty of those entrusted with investigations. Positive results, whether they are valid or not, are rewarded in a variety of ways, including advances in rank and revenues. Negative results are damaging and frustrating. During the past few weeks this was evident when a highly regarded technique for making pig kidneys ‘acceptable’ for people in need of kidney transplants failed. The kidney was irreparably damaged by the recipient’s immune system after just 47 days. A prior effort to transplant a genetically modified pig kidney into a human failed after two months. Pig organs and pig physiology are similar to those of humans, but there are enough differences to frustrate the efforts to use pigs as organ donors.
There were other newsworthy items during the past few weeks, but none had so clearcut an outcome as the pig kidney failure. We watch in disbelief as the slaughter of innocents continues in the Middle East, Haiti, and the Ukraine, as well as in less well-publicized wars. Consistent with the timeless adage that the first casualty of war is the truth, the combatants all insist upon the necessity of their actions, and the dead and mutilated continue to pile up. Â
We are caught up in struggles and strategies that date back millennia and that seem destined to reach beyond our lifetimes into the future. In the Middle East, in particular, we are witnessing horrors that defy explanation. All of those doing the killing and maiming have excellent explanations for the unbridled murder of noncombatants. They insist that the killing of unarmed women, children, old men, and even relief workers is either essential to achieving a ‘righteous’ end or is unintentional and will be investigated. We long ago passed the point at which the collateral damage inflicted by either side could be dismissed as unintentional. Again, we have numbers that cannot be dismissed as merely accidents associated with the ‘fog of war.’
Given that these battles are being conducted in the so-called Holy Land, one must wonder if the participants are taking their cues from the so-called Holy Book. It is reminiscent of the Biblical account of the slaughter of the Midianite women and boys brought back to the soldier’s camp along with booty collected after the Midianite men had all been killed. [btw, it is in the book of Numbers]. The massacres were reportedly ordered by Moses, a sacred and revered figure in the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. No explanation is provided for this extraordinary act of savagery.
The sacred texts of all of the people shooting and butchering each other in this endless war are replete with stories of cruelty and injustice. There are strenuous attempts to justify such actions, but in the final analysis, the acts of combatants on both sides in this Twenty-first Century contest have gone beyond justification. Rather than reading their ancient texts as cautionary tales, they embrace them as instruction manuals for modern day hates and horrors.
Although the government of the United States did not start this conflict and appears to have worked towards ending it with a diplomatic solution, it is being held responsible for the continuation of the war. Many of us Americans believe our protests will help end the Middle East war, just as the protests against the Vietnam war in the 1960s and 1970s forced an end to that war. Unfortunately, just as the carpet bombing of Cambodia in the 1970s wasted lives and munitions without having an impact on the Vietnam war, our pleas for an end to the bombing of Israeli cities and Gazan refugee camps are not having an impact on the governments in Israel or Gaza. These governments are willing to sacrifice the children of Israel and Gaza in a vendetta that appears to have survived mandates and treaties and international interventions extending back nearly a century.
Replacing the current American President, installing a predominantly Republican Congress, forcing American universities to withdraw their investments in Israel, and blocking traffic in liberal-leaning American cities will not alter the attitudes or actions of the belligerents in the Middle East. We must face the facts: this is not Vietnam. This is not a conflict in which we can merely declare victory, load our people and helicopters on aircraft carriers, and head home. The opposition of Americans to the Middle East war is undoubtedly just as earnest and sincere as the opposition to the Vietnam war in the 1970s, but a strategy that worked in the 1970s to end a conflict directly waged by the United States government cannot succeed in 2024 in stopping a death match between foreign governments intent on destroying each other.
Dr. Lechtenberg is an Easton resident who graduated from Tufts University and Tufts Medical School in Massachusetts and subsequently trained at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. He worked as a neurologist at several New York Hospitals, including Kings County and The Long Island College Hospital, while maintaining a private practice, teaching at SUNY Downstate Medical School, and publishing 15 books on a variety of medical topics. He worked in drug development in the U.S., as well as in England, Germany, and France.
