Thursday, January 08, 2009

Doc Propaganda? UPDATE: CNN Yanked Video

**** CNN HAS YANKED THE VIDEO WITHOUT EXPLANATION****

This video appeared on CNN (HT: Last Mohican) and seemed fishy based on what the doctors were attempting to do. The story supposedly is that the child was injured in an Israeli airstrike by a UAV, and that the kid's brother was videotaping life in Gaza when he was summoned to the hospital to video his brother's death.

The video shows two men working over the body of a victim. One of the men giving chest compressions while the other fiddles with the monitor and appears to put EEG leads on the victim. They declare him dead.

If that was the end of the story, it would seem fishy enough, because you don't give chest compressions to the victim's abdomen as the guy on the right was doing. You also don't fiddle with a monitor that isn't hooked up to the victim although there's several rough cuts in the video so that you can't exactly tell the order of the footage.

I took infant, child, and adult CPR courses several times and they repeatedly drilled into us that you have do respiration plus 20-30 compressions (that's changed over the years), each one placed on the sternum going 1-2 inches and that if you're doing it right, you're probably going to crack ribs. The victim is 12 years old, so a two handed technique is workable, although some CPR techniques suggest using 1 hand and only compressing the chest 1 inch.

The guy giving the compressions isn't even doing it in the right position to maximize the chances for the kid to live. It almost looks like the guy is massaging the kids belly, not his chest. His hand position appears significant lower than it should be.

What should raise eyebrows further is who that doctor on the left is. He's a propagandist who thinks that the terrorists were right to carry out the 9/11 attacks.
A high-profile Norwegian doctor who has said the September 11 terrorists were justified in their attack is now treating patients in Gaza and is being accused of presenting "hard-core propaganda" to TV interviewers in his telling of the conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Dr. Mads Gilbert has become an unofficial advocate of the Palestinian cause, his critics say.

International media reports, including those from the BBC, CBS, CNN and FOX’s sister station Sky News, present Gilbert as an ordinary doctor.

But a look at his record shows that Gilbert, 61, is a political activist and member of the Norwegian Maoist "Red" party, and he has been involved in solidarity work for the Palestinians since the 1970s. He has criticized the international aid organization Doctors Without Borders for refusing to take sides in conflicts.

Gilbert volunteers at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza with the Norwegian Aid Committee (NORWAC), an aid organization funded by the Norwegian government, and he has been interviewed by the media on a variety of issues. Israeli government officials have said Hamas hides weapons in the hospital where Gilbert works.
Who was really taking the video footage? Was Gilbert really treating this patient properly or was he simply engaging in propaganda for the purpose of attacking Israel? By the looks of it, I'd say that there's reason to question the medical treatment that this person received.

I think it also calls into question reports of casualties and the cause of death as reported from these Gazan facilities. I don't put it past Gilbert or anyone else operating under Hamas to honestly report causes of death or to conduct themselves honorably or morally when Hamas routinely goes through these same hospitals shooting collaborators.

UPDATE:
The following is from an LGF reader who is a neurosurgeon, dentate:
OK, as a neurosurgeon (like Sanjay Gupta!) who has seen plenty of trauma, that was NOT a real resuscitation. It was not even a good fake. The doctors involved in a code, especially for a young child, are anxious and tense, and would be huddled at the bedside and looking at the child and at the monitors, not pacing around and chatting as Gilbert is doing while the bearded guy taps on the chest. Also, this is a death due to rocket trauma. Aside from a tiny round spot that looks like it came from an IV, there is no blood there, not on the sheets, not on the doctors. It was obviously not head trauma, because you see the purported victim's head later, with not a scratch; it's not exsanguination due to a traumatic amputation, since the arms and legs seem intact too. this would have been chest or abdominal trauma. What's the injury here, folks? Where are the chest tubes? Where is the blood?

And the nurse who commented above is correct, this is not what family looks like at a code. They look as though they were instructed to cry. If your child is dying in front of you, and Dr. Gilbert is pacing around, not bent over your child, you get hysterical. I know of several instances of doctors having their teeth knocked out when they came to tell a family member that a child had died, and that is here in the States.

Finally, it defies belief, even if you take the video at face value, that nobody comments on the idiocy of sending your kids to play on the roof in the middle of a war zone. No one at CNN thinks that this is peculiar?
Indeed.

UPDATE:
Another LGF reader, Killgore Trout, has more on the background of the videographer in this incident, including that he runs hosting services including for Hamas. Nice. No bias there.

UPDATE:
CNN pulled the video without explanation, but Charles at LGF has saved it for posterity via YouTube:



The video also appears on Channel 4 News:



Both videos show signs of editing and jumping during the treatment of the victim. Channel 4's reporter is pontificating and engaging in nothing but propagandizing.

The fact is that this video has now made its way around the world courtesy of CNN and Channel 4 and the lies and smears get spread by CNN without a moment to check to see if any of this checks out.

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