Article ID: CBB001422143

“A Matter of Conscience”: The Moral Authority of the World Medical Association and the Readmission of the South Africans, 1976--1994 (2014)

unapi

Mbali, Mandisa (Author)


Medical History
Volume: 58, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 257-277


Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Article in a special issue, “New Directions and Challenges in Histories of Health, Healing and Medicine in South Africa”
Language: English

This article describes the role of transnational anti-apartheid activism in South Africa, Britain and the United States in generating international moral outrage over the readmission of the Medical Association of South Africa (MASA) to the World Medical Association (WMA), which had taken place in 1981 after it had withdrawn from that body in 1976. It discusses an example of a controversy where an international health organisation (IHO) lost moral authority as a result of being accused of white supremacy and a pro-American engagement in Cold War politics. At the time of its readmission to the WMA, the MASA was controversial because of its failure to strike off its membership roll one of the doctors implicated the death in detention of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko in 1977. It details how these activists viewed the American Medical Association as having campaigned for the MASA's readmission. The WMA's readmission of the MASA cost the former its relationships with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the British Medical Association -- a dispute which continued until South Africa's democratic transition of 1994. With its focus on transnational activism in relation to the WMA and the effects of activists' allegations of racism on its internal politics, this article contributes to the literature on the history of IHOs. Ultimately, this controversy shows the deficiency of international medical professional associations as ethical arbitrators of last resort.

...More
Included in

Article Parle, Julie; Noble, Vanessa (2014) New Directions and Challenges in Histories of Health, Healing and Medicine in South Africa. Medical History (pp. 147-165). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001422143/

Similar Citations

Article Wyk, Martha van; (2010)
Sunset over Atomic Apartheid: United States--South African Nuclear Relations, 1981--93 (/isis/citation/CBB001213843/)

Book Winston, Andrew S.; (2004)
Defining Difference: Race and Racism in the History of Psychology (/isis/citation/CBB000471026/)

Book Christa Kuljian; (2017)
Darwin's Hunch: Science, Race and the Search for Human Origins (/isis/citation/CBB789559227/)

Book Glynn Custred; (2016)
A History of Anthropology as a Holistic Science (/isis/citation/CBB463038781/)

Article Kelly O’Donnell; (2020)
The Case Against the Doctors: Gender, Authority, and Critical Science Writing in the 1960s (/isis/citation/CBB612925238/)

Book Hecht, Gabrielle; (2011)
Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB001251047/)

Article Radin, Joanna; Cameron, Noel; (2013)
Studying Mandela's Children: Human Biology in Post-Apartheid South Africa: An Interview with Noel Cameron (/isis/citation/CBB001212642/)

Book Nattrass, Nicoli; (2012)
The AIDS Conspiracy: Science Fights Back (/isis/citation/CBB001252724/)

Book Melissa Diane Armstrong; (2020)
An Ambulance on Safari: The ANC and the Making of a Health Department in Exile (/isis/citation/CBB935246702/)

Article Digby, Anne; (2013)
Black Doctors and Discrimination under South Africa's Apartheid Regime (/isis/citation/CBB001252689/)

Book Blanchard, Pascal; (2008)
Human Zoos: Science and Spectacle in the Age of Colonial Empires (/isis/citation/CBB001033417/)

Article Monamie Bhadra Haines; (February 2019)
Contested credibility economies of nuclear power in India (/isis/citation/CBB710438620/)

Authors & Contributors
Drake, Simone
Kuljian, Christa
Haines, Monamie Bhadra
O'Donnell, Kelly Suzanne
Custred, Glynn
Armstrong, Melissa Diane
Concepts
Apartheid
Science and race
Political activists and activism
Controversies and disputes
Medicine and society
Democracy
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
21st century
19th century
Modern
Places
United States
South Africa
Great Britain
Germany
France
Soviet Union
Institutions
African National Congress
University of the Witwatersrand
United States. Atomic Energy Commission
United States. Environmental Protection Agency
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment