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November 21, 2003/Cheshvan 26 5764, Vol. 56, No. 9
Striving for peace
BARRY COHEN
Editor
The Hadassah Hospital staff in Jerusalem views those needing medical treatment not as Palestinians, Jews or Arabs - but as patients.
"When you enter the door of the hospital, it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, what you did outside the hospital," says Professor Shlomo Mor-Yosef, director general of Hadassah Medical Organization. "The minute you are in, you are a patient, and that's it."
Mor-Yosef visited the Valley on Nov. 4 to network and meet with Hadassah members. During his one-week trip to the United States, he also visited Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Hadassah Hospital has attempted to "build small bridges" by reaching out to the Palestinian community but has not been successful, he says.
Hadassah has set up a residency program for Palestinians to expand their medical infrastructure, he notes.
But it's very difficult to recruit their doctors, he says.
Hadassah asks the Palestinian Authority only two questions: What type of physicians and facilities do they need, and can they name volunteers to take part in the training program, Mor-Yosef explains.
Representatives from the PA do not answer either question, he says.
The Palestinians are allowing politics to overwhelm their need to provide the best quality of care to their patients, concludes Mor-Yosef.
Much attention has been paid to how Hadassah Hospital treats its Israeli-Arab and Palestinian patients, he notes, citing the Nov. 2 episode of "60 Minutes" on CBS as one example. However, much more is going on at Hadassah, he says, and part of his mission is to spread the message that the hospital is a leading research medical center.
Mor-Yosef cites in particular Hadassah's stem cell research. Because the Bush administration has approved Hadassah's line of stem cells, the hospital is able to apply for federal grants. They are using these grants to treat Parkinson's disease by attempting to direct stem cells to become nerve cells and to treat diabetes by attempting to direct them to produce insulin.
Hadassah is also making inroads in gene therapy research, says Mor-Yosef, by successfully manipulating the genes of the New Castle virus, associated with causing brain disease. Hadassah doctors have discovered how to introduce an altered form of the virus to patients who have a brain tumor; the virus goes to the brain, but instead of worsening the disease, it attacks the tumor, explains Mor-Yosef. As a result, the treatments have extended the life of those struggling with brain disease.
As director general of Hadassah, Mor-Yosef, who received a master's degree in management from Harvard University in 1994, notes that he is not responsible for the day-to-day routine of the organization.
"But I am responsible for the vision," which includes the exciting research discoveries made by the staff, he says.
While he does not treat patients who are injured in car accidents, for example, "in case of terror attacks, I'll be there," he notes.
After an attack, most of the Hadassah staff arrives to help, without being asked, he says. "Part of showing leadership is for me to be there with them."
Mor-Yosef's family has been affected by war and by terrorism.
His brother was killed in the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur War. His mother-in-law and father-in-law were attacked by Palestinian terrorists in Egypt in 1990, three hours after their bus crossed the border. In the attack, his father-in-law was killed and his mother-in-law was seriously injured.
In addition, one of Mor-Yosef's sons, while serving in the army in Bethlehem, was blinded in one eye by a stone-throwing Palestinian youth.
"Someone can take these stories, as many families do, and say, 'we don't want the Arabs. We have to kill the Arabs. There is no solution. Don't be na‹ve,' " says Mor-Yosef.
Through his efforts as director general of Hadassah, he says he has chosen a way to try to live together with the Palestinians, "not in a na•ve way, to give them everything ... but to try to find different avenues (to achieve peace)."
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