19/10/98

Blood libel

    I once saw a wounded lion up close. It remained docile until someone pointed at its hurt paw, whereupon it roared ferociously, making it clear that it was, after all, still a lion to be feared.
    Professor Eliezer Rachmilevich is a wounded lion, wounded by a lamb. He would like to make a loud noise about it, reminding us that he is, still, the great Professor Rachmilevich.
    But he is muted. He licks his injured pride as the country points an accusing finger at him. He cannot speak about it. He feels defenseless and vulnerable, lion though he is.
    The story is well-known by now, a scandal that rocked the nation when it came to light two years ago. Rachmilevich, head of hematology at Hadassah-Ein Kerem Hospital, was accused of turning away a teenaged cancer patient formerly under his care because she dared seek a second opinion. He allegedly gave orders that the terminally ill woman, Dassy Rabinowitz, be refused a transfusion, forcing her to go elsewhere.
     A high-level investigation will decide his fate in November.
    For Dassy, the little lamb who brought down the king of beasts, there was, understandably, universal sympathy. For Rachmilevich, there has been absolute vilification.
    If the accusations are adjudged to be true, he had done the unforgivable: compromising his role in the circle of life.
    I am not attempting to investigate the case here, or to judge it: that is being done by a committee with far greater access to the truth. In numerous conversations with Rachmilevich, I have heard his version, but as persuasive as he is, I await the tribunal; if he is found guilty, may the ax fall.
    I came to know him because I was under his department's care for many months. He visited me frequently and we chatted (no doubt because I'm a journalist). After having written scathingly about the attitudes of some staffers elsewhere in the hospital, I found his hematology ward to be a model of professionalism, dedication, compassion. He had trained them, he said proudly, and I could only laud his efforts.
    He always wanted to talk about the scandal, but he held back on details, correctly citing patient-doctor confidentiality. He desperately needed a sympathetic ear, a friend in the fourth estate, because he was being torn limb from limb by the press. He singled out The Jerusalem Post for not being unfair, but he felt there was near glee in the Hebrew papers for his plight, like hyenas gouging his not-yet-dead body.
    It is not hard to see why. If this were a question of negligence, rather than perfidious abuse of power, there would be no scandal; if he were a bus driver, or a factory foreman, there would be no widespread outrage.
    But a doctor!

THERE HAS been a startling pattern lately of doctors being assaulted by agitated patients or grief-stricken relatives. In this era of medical science we have high expectations. More than that, we no longer respectfully subjugate ourselves to authority. A doctor who fails to cure, or fails to respond snappily to our cries, might take a fistful on the chin. He might be sued. Or he might be accused of terrible things.
    There is a certain savage satisfaction in all of us for seeing the mighty humbled. Rachmilevich is not a bus driver. More than just a doctor, professor, department head, trustee of frightened cancer patients who don't want to die, Rachmilevich represents an out-of-fashion image: a lordly icon on a crumbling pedestal.
    Hadassah used to be full of them, haughty gods affected by their powers to save lives. Most were expunged over the last two decades. Rachmilevich survived the purge and, in the snake pit of career-climbing that is the Hadassah Medical Organization, he made it to the heights. He may or may not have been helped by being the son of Moshe Rachmilevich, one of the country's revered medical pioneers; but he has certainly come to be recognized as one of Israel's top doctors.
    And the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
    Eliezer Rachmilevich today does not cut the towering figure he used to. He is humbled. He is hurt, a patient now, who can't find healing. Where there was a sense of superiority in his bearing, now there is self-sympathy. He does not walk so tall anymore. He is suffering, not like Dassy did, not in fear of his life, but for fear of living with his reputation ruined.
    He deserves to be deflated, said one of his staffers, but not like this, not from this case, not to this extent. I spoke to many of his underlings, including the nurse directly involved in the case, and almost every one of them was sympathetic and supportive of Rachmilevich.
    Waiting for the final judgment against him -- not by society, which has already prepared the noose, but by the tribunal -- he is profoundly frustrated: he does not feel he was wrong, but he knows that no one believes that. And he has nowhere to go for a second opinion.

UPDATE: The tribunal fully exonerated Prof. Rachmilevich. He retired a few months later, and then took up a position creating a new department in another hospital.

     In many conversations I had with Rachmilevich, he refused to divulge details of the scandal, abiding by medical ethics. But after interviewing many staffers, I came to believe that Rachmilevich was victimized by a sorry misunderstanding.

     An abrupt nurse – who often attended to me, and whom I happen to