Saturday, June 25, 2011 – Irish Examiner
\nLeading medic resigns in Bahrain protest
\nBy Catherine Shanahan<\/p>\n
Friday, June 24, 2011<\/p>\n
Ireland – A LEADING medic has resigned his fellowship of the country\u2019s largest postgraduate medical institution in protest at its failure to condemn the detention and torture of nurses and doctors in Bahrain.<\/p>\n
Professor Eoin O\u2019Brien, former president of the Irish Heart Foundation&, said he believes he is the first fellow to resign “in principle” from the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.<\/p>\n
The professor of molecular pharmacology at the Conway Institute of Biomolecular & Biomedical Research in University College Dublin mailed his resignation on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Prof O\u2019Brien said he had done so “because there comes a time when you have to stand up for moral issues and we cannot have doctors and nurses tortured in the course of duty”.<\/p>\n
He said the situation in Bahrain where doctors and nurses treating pro-democracy supporters are being arrested, detained and tortured was likely to “go badly wrong” and that “the colleges \u2014 the RCPI and the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI) \u2014 by keeping silent, will be almost complicit”. …more<\/a><\/p>\n