The Day the Pagers Went Off- Letter to the Canadian Family Practice Journal

This letter was sent on behalf of the Board of Doctors Against Racism and Antisemitism (DARA) re: an  article published in the Canadian Family Practice Journal

To the Editors:  CFP/MFC, Canadian Family Physician, le Medicin De Famille Canadien

Re: The Day the Pagers Exploded.  Nisrine Makarem, Canadian Family Physician February 2025; 71 (2) e53; DOI: https://doi.org/10.46747/cfp.7102e53

Cc.  Board of the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

We were perplexed and disturbed to read this article, which was published under the title “Research article/Web Exclusive  in the on- line CFP journal ,  and under the section, The  Art of Family Medicine in the PDF format.

What was the purpose of this article as either research  or an Art of Family Medicine article? There was certainly no research question, sample size or methodology documented, aside from describing 200 severely injured patients . There was no objective evaluation except a statement about the “unmatched professionalism and efficiency (of health care staff)… operating with unwavering dedication, professionalism and solidarity”.

Was the purpose  of this article to advise Canadian family physicians to warn their patients about the dangers of  pocket pagers, just like the professional need to warn the public about other faulty equipment, like strollers, car-seats, pacemakers, insulin pumps or contaminated drug supplies?

Were the pagers worn by young men who were skilled tradesmen, business executives or even professional health care workers on call?  Surely this occupational detail is necessary to better understand the associated risks of exploding pagers. The author neglects to mention these details.

Was the purpose of this article  to advise family physicians about methods used,  or lessons learned  to mitigate the dangers of unanticipated mass casualties after a natural disaster or even during a war?  If they were interested in policies to reduce deaths and disability,  they could have cited  this article describing the unprecedented 1475 casualties, caused by the Hamas invasion and massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct 7^th 2023, who were  evacuated to Soroka University Medical Center (SUMC) in the first 24 hours at an unprecedented peak rate of 83/hour.  They could have described the steps taken to keep the mortality rate down to 2.9%. Or they could have referred to this peer-reviewed article  in the Annals of Surgery Open,  which described the injury profiles of 630 hospitalized casualties during the same attack  (277 civilian and 353 soldiers), after they were admitted to hospital.

In the last paragraph of her article, the author extols: “the strength, resilience, denial, endurance, faith, indoctrination; perhaps a mix of all these” and concludes: “Whatever it was, it is something that deserves to be shared with the world”.  The author neglected to mention that the 200 “faithful and indoctrinated “ young men were all elite commanders in Hezbollah, an organization and army designated as terrorists by Canada, the US, the EU and many countries around the world because of their murder of innocent civilians, international narcotics trafficking as well as trafficking women into sex slavery.   The author does not mention, that on Oct 8^th 2023, the organization that these now wounded “young men” belong to, Hezbollah, in an unprovoked fashion  chose to fire missiles at the civilian populations in the State of Israel, resulting in mass evacuations of towns and villages in the north, or about their missile attack  that killed 12 Druse children playing soccer on the Golan Heights.

The author neglects to mention that the pager-attack (by the unidentified State of Israel), stopped tens of thousands of mass casualties and deaths which would have occurred if Hezbollah enacted their publicly stated and well documented plans to invade northern Israel ,from  armories in tunnels under homes in Lebanese villages at the Israeli-Lebanese Border. The author does not state that the organization that these military commanders belonged to, share the  genocidal goals of their allies Hamas and patron Iran,  “to kill all Israeli Jews and wipe Israel off the map”. The author  neglected to mention the unprecedented caution taken by Israel to use the minimal amount of explosive to reduce collateral injury of innocent civilians. Unlike the Hezbollah and Hamas strikes which were directed against  Israeli civilians, the pager attack was an extremely precise operation aimed at Hezbollah fighters.

Publication of this article, extolling these wounded fighters,  who are members of an internationally recognized terrorist organization,  in the premier Family Medicine Journal  in Canada, raises serious questions about the quality of its articles, and editorial and peer review processes for selecting and publishing manuscripts.   More importantly,  it raises the question of the  intent of this Canadian medical journal,  and true nature of its support for anti-racism and social justice, which are being considered as core components of  CanMEDS professional competency.  Does the editor believe, like the author, that the strength, resilience, denial, endurance, faith, indoctrination; perhaps a mix of all these …is something that deserves to be shared with the world”, in the CFP Journal?

It is our view that the editor(s) should be held accountable for accepting a manuscript with glaring omissions, critical to interpreting this article  and that  raise serious questions about the intent of the author  and the journal. Their decision to publish this article does a disservice to all medical authors, family physicians and people truly concerned about truth and social justice.

We have noticed that other letters- to- the -editor criticizing this article have been deleted from your website. Therefore, we will also be publishing and sharing this as an Open Letter

Yours truly,

The Board,

Doctors against Racism and Antisemitism.(DARA)