Monday 4 April 2011

Martin Birnstingl

Martin Birnstingl, who died on January 21 aged 86, was a leading vascular surgeon and a passionate campaigner for human rights who employed his medical expertise on many occasions to challenge the official line. 

Martin Birnstingl
In the 1960s he travelled to Hanoi during the American bombing of North Vietnam and collected evidence of the use of indiscriminate anti-personnel weaponry by the United States military, including so-called "pineapple" bombs, which on impact sprayed out pellets over a huge area, maiming or killing hundreds of civilians.
The "Ham and High" printed his report, and in 1967 he gave evidence to Bertrand Russell's unofficial "International War Crimes Tribunal". His experience and campaign against the war led to his making an appearance in Peter Brook's 1968 drama-documentary about British responses to the war, Tell Me Lies.
In the wake of the massacres of Palestinians by Israeli-backed Lebanese Christian Phalangists in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982, the Israeli group Peace Now invited Birnstingl as one of a small group of Jewish doctors and scientists to visit Lebanon to study the health conditions in the refugee camps at first hand.
They gained access to the large Ain-el-Hilweh and Rashidiya camps in southern Lebanon at a time when these were being systematically bulldozed under Israeli orders. On their return to Britain they published a report on the health of the refugees.
A staunch member of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Birnstingl continued to campaign against infringements of Palestinian human rights. In 2007 he was a co-signatory of a letter in the Lancet reporting allegations that Israeli doctors had colluded in the torture of prisoners in Gaza and criticising the Israeli Medical Association for not speaking out on the issue. He was one of 725 physicians who called for the UN to investigate the claims.
In 2004 he was one of the group of physicians who challenged Lord Hutton's decision to classify documents about the death of chemical weapons expert Dr David Kelly and took issue with Hutton's conclusion that Kelly's death was a suicide.
Birnstingl and his colleagues maintained that it was "highly improbable" that the primary cause of death was haemorrhage from transection of a single ulnar artery, as stated in the Hutton report. In 2010 the incoming coalition government made the proceedings public, although the verdict remained unchanged.
The eldest of four children, Martin Avigdor Birnstingl was born on June 17 1924. His parents – his father was a master printer, his mother a painter – were Fabian socialists who had founded the Favil Press, an Arts and Crafts publisher of the 1930s, and encouraged their children to develop broad cultural interests.
When Martin was eight the family moved to a farm in Wiltshire. He then went to Bedales, where he developed a lifelong interest in ornithology.
After leaving school he studied at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College. Following wartime service in the Royal Army Medical Corps in East Africa and Mauritius, he returned to Barts', staying there for the rest of his professional life.
Beginning in the hospital's surgical unit under Sir James Patterson Ross, Birnstingl soon developed an interest in the new discipline of vascular surgery, which had been pioneered in America in 1948. In 1952 he and a visiting American fellow, Jack Connolly, toured the pioneering vascular surgery centres of Europe, their education in the latest techniques being greatly facilitated by Birnstingl's fluency in several languages.
After a year at Stanford University, California, he returned to Barts', becoming assistant director of the surgical unit, where he formed a brilliant team with the flamboyant Eddy Tuckwell and became one of the country's most respected vascular surgeons.
During the Fifties there was rapid progress in methods of replacing large arteries, and the Bart's team was at the forefront. In 1973 Birnstingl edited and published Peripheral Vascular Surgery, a concise textbook for the surgeon and general medical reader containing up-to-date reviews of diseases and problems affecting the abdominal aorta and peripheral arteries, with an account of the latest surgical techniques for treating them.
In 1986 he was elected president of the Vascular Surgical Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
Away from his duties at Barts', Birnstingl enjoyed walking, sailing, canoeing and skiing, rarely missing an alpine season. In 1960 he completed the Haute Route from Chamonix to Saas Fee, with his brother Roger, taking in a considerable number of summits en route, including Monte Rose and the Allalinhorn.
He was interested in all the arts, particularly poetry and music, and was a fine flautist who played in many London amateur orchestras, even performing the Bach B Minor Suite in public. Later he learned to play the harpsichord.
At the time of his death Birnstingl was still actively campaigning, with the MP Norman Baker, to reopen the inquest into the death of Kelly. He never accepted the verdict of suicide.
Birnstingl shared his humanitarian beliefs with Renate Prince, an architect who was his partner for 50 years.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/medicine-obituaries/8422225/Martin-Birnstingl.html

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