Pakistan medical assn to boycott European drugs over cartoons

Forbes.com ^ | 02/06/2006 | Unknown

[Pessimist]

MULTAN, Pakistan (AFX) - The Pakistan Medical Association has vowed not to prescribe medicines from firms based in some European countries where controversial cartoons portraying the Prophet Mohammed were published, said Shahid Rao, the body's general secretary for Punjab province.

The association will boycott drugs from Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and France to protest the 'blasphemous' drawings, Rao said.

'We have taken a unanimous decision and it will be immediately implemented in Pakistan,' Rao told AFP.

'Doctors in the country are very motivated on this issue,' he said. 'We would use alternate medicines in future till a public apology comes from these countries.'

Pharmacists have also vowed not to sell such medicines, Rao said.

The association is advising patients against using medicines from the offending countries if they are mistakenly prescribed by doctors, he added.

The recent republication of the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September, has sparked angry protests and attacks against Western interests in parts of the Muslim world.

Many Muslim countries, institutions and organizations have called for a boycott of products from countries where the media have carried the caricatures.

Rallies condemning the cartoons have been held almost daily in Pakistan. Hundreds of traders in the central city of Multan burned the Danish, French and German flags on Sunday.

On Saturday, Pakistan's foreign ministry summoned the ambassadors of Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Holland, Hungary, Norway and the Czech Republic to lodge protests.

It is not immediately clear whether the Pakistan Medical Association is planning to boycott medicines from any of the other European nations that published the cartoons.

[Pessimist]

Now if they'd only do the same for food...

[laney]

How many *Muslim Psychos* reside in the world anyways?

[Jeff Head]

That'll show 'em.

[untenured]

The Hippocratic oath is for infidels, apparently.

[Mark Felton]

It is mental illness when a person does himself injury to spite an enemy.

[TXBubba]

I guess looking out it from their viewpoint, I probably wouldn't take any drugs made in Iran at the moment myself. Thankfully I don't think they make any there so I have no need to deprive myself of them.

[pikachu]

The association is advising patients against using medicines from the offending countries if they are mistakenly prescribed by doctors, he added.

How many Pakistanis will get the privlidge to croak to support this boycott? Do they also get 72 virgins or is there some sort of HMO co-pay?

[Slump Tester]

Makes perfect sense to me. Now they can back to using camel dung to treat the sick and afflicted.

[AbeKrieger]

If your actions result in the boycott of your business by muslims, you are to be congratulated from improving the climate for your customers.

Now, can we get them to boycott entire states? Increase property values immediately: Muslim Free District.

[Cornpone]

Good...maybe like those idiotic Muslim Nigerians who refused WHO sponsored polio vaccinations because it was a western plot to sterilize moooslimb women, maybe they'll all die...good riddance and amen.

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

Good...maybe like those idiotic Muslim Nigerians who refused WHO sponsored polio vaccinations because it was a western plot to sterilize moooslimb women, maybe they'll all die...good riddance and amen.

Africans prefer toddlers to avoid AIDS.

[tx_eggman]

he Pakistan Medical Association has vowed not to prescribe medicines from firms based in some European countries where controversial cartoons portraying the Prophet Mohammed were published

In the absence of prescription drugs from the west, Pakistani doctors will be treating illness with poultices made from precise combinations of dirt, weeds and yak dung.

[MineralMan]

Ah, time to go back to medicinal herbs, I see, for these folks. Maybe a little hashish to soothe the spirit.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

I say the drug companies in Europe (and the US) should say, "OK. That's fine. Seeya!"

[davisfh]

"Pakistan medical assn to boycott European drugs over cartoons"

It's called "cutting off your nose to spite your face."

[Brilliant]

The only drug I want the Pakistanis to use is the pill.

[cinives]

or foreign aid ...

[LK44-40]

If this were U.S. drugs being boycotted, I guarantee that France, Germany, and Russia would be all over it, sucking up to the muzzies and trying to lockup the market the U.S. was losing. No doubt the Russians will be if any of their scientists, all of whom did graduate work in ballistic missle technolgy, know how to make any medicines. Realpolitik and all that, don't you know.

(I realize that my post is rhetorically lame because I couldn't satisfy myself with sliming just one target, a little like a young lion who does not realize that a single animal must be selected from the fleeing herd.)

[Lunatic Fringe]

Now there's a bright idea... don't buy medicine from companies that have nothing to do with these stupid cartoons, simply because they reside in the same country.

[Robe]

"vowed not to prescribe medicines from firms based in some European countries

...now if they REALLLLLY want to make a statement they shouldn't prescribe medicines INVENTED at firms based in the WEST

That should take care of the problem in ......ahhhhhhh....10 to 14 days ... (incubation time for most all viruses for those of you in Rio Linda) (8^)

[Gefreiter]

I wonder whether the patents that are attached to the infidels' medicines are also to be boycotted?

Or is it OK to use a kafir's knowledge, just not his products?