The once prestigious Lancet medical journal has continued its ideological rampage, slamming Italy’s democratically elected government for allegedly abetting “racism” and “xenophobia.”
“Italy has been witnessing a rapid escalation towards racism and xenophobia since the new government came into power in June, 2018.” So begins an article titled “Immigration in Italy: the medical community’s role in human rights” in the Lancet’s June 8 issue, which, as readers will immediately deduce, has little to do with the “medical community.”
The U.K.-based Lancet, founded in 1823 as a medical journal, has morphed into a mouthpiece of what it calls “the progressive agenda,” squandering its hard-earned moral and scientific capital on issues such as climate change, immigration, and gay rights. As Breitbart News reported last week, the Lancet recently ran a five-part series of articles on “gender equality, norms, and health” that denounced a conservative “backlash” against the global LGBTQ agenda.
“The progressive agenda that demands gender equality for girls and women and gender norms that promote health and wellbeing for all, including gender minorities,” a team of Lancet writers wrote, includes “advocating against toxic masculinities” and “promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) justice.”
This project is menaced by conservatives who often oppose gay rights under the guise of religious liberty and traditional values, the writers declared.
“Co-opting the term gender, powerful forces are pushing against hard-fought gains in human rights and health by rallying against the so-called threat of gender ideology, a term created to indict a range of progressive views, such as LGBTQ rights, access to comprehensive sexuality education, and accommodation of diverse family forms,” the journal lamented.
In its most recent attack on populism, the Lancet states that Italy’s Decree on Immigration and Security includes measures that “fundamentally undermine international human rights principles.” Moreover, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini “declared that Italy would not sign the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration or take part in an intergovernmental conference in Marrakech, Morocco,” the Lancet notes disapprovingly.
The United Nations has condemned these “alarming hatred measures,” the article continues, and published “an appeal to the Italian Government to reconsider the legislative changes and prevent violation of international human rights law.”
Scrambling to find a link between this overtly political message and the “medical community,” the article suggests that the Decree on Immigration and Security “has serious implications for the right to health, both regarding access to the national health-care system and the social conditions that contribute to the physical and mental health of immigrants.”
“In a time of growing intolerance and racial discrimination worldwide, and of nationalistic attitudes towards integration, European physicians and health-care providers must join forces in counteracting these views,” the Lancet states.
Protecting immigrant populations from “undeserved human rights violations,” the article concludes, “is not only an ethical and moral duty, but also a deontological obligation of medical doctors.”
Hippocrates, call your office. Medicine is now politics.
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