The I-bomb was dropped in a medical school class today.
Sitting there, actually paying attention for once, the American doctor was giving a lecture about various neurological conditions, one of which is Multiple Sclerosis.
MS is a disease that we don’t quite fully understand yet, similarly to many other diseases of the brain, and we don’t have much of it in Lebanon for one reason. And this reason was illustrated by research done by our neighbors to the South.
Israel.
The word was dropped and those who weren’t paying attention suddenly perked up.
“Multiple Sclerosis has environmental factors relating to the weather. People who live the first 15 years of their life in warmer climates, such as Lebanon, have a much less predisposition to develop MS than those who live in colder climates. Immigrant studies were done in Israel regarding this issue and while we don’t understand the mechanism of why this happens, we are certain weather is a factor.”
As the lecture ended, I was wondering why isn’t Lebanon the country that gets to have its name mentioned by foreign doctors who come to other foreign countries to give guest lectures? Why isn’t my country the one with universities hell-bent on finding new breakthroughs and new discoveries in science and medicine and things that matter?
“Researchers in Lebanon have found a very important correlation between this factor and that disease” – said no one ever.
Then I realized, we’re too busy sending out useless drones to Israel that do nothing except boost our self-esteem and get some of us to freak out over potentially rubbing the thin-skinned bully to the South the wrong way, fight over an electoral law that will get us nowhere and sink deeper into an abyss of ignorance.
What have we done lately? Absolutely nothing worth mentioning.
A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares 
Walaw – we have beauty pageants and cosmetic surgery loans…
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Yeah we are special with our loans 😛
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we have racist sexist scum people
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That we do. But so does every other country on Earth.
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Actually, about two months ago it was discovered that egypt and israel had one of the highest rates of publishing scientific journals. The study involved the arab world region and lebanon came in the end of the list naturally.
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I’m surprised about Egypt actually, which goes to show it’s not all about funding.
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Well, this reminds me of the blog posts on the boycot team. I said it in the past and I will say it again. The greatest victory against Israel will be the day when Israel is inferior to its neighbors when it comes to high-tech inventions, level of education and scientific achievements. Of course, one can find an excuse for such achievements by pointing out how Israel funded all its research through scary Jew gold from god knows where, but conspiracies never made any man rich.
Just to be sure, what I said above obviously doesn’t justify any political situation. But I think it’s important to look at two facts: Israel is never going to win militarily unless the whole world is going to allow it to genocide the whole region, and its neighbors will never win unless you reincarnate Nasser and Hafez, give them funny steroids and actually believe a military conflict will be succesful this time.
That said Elie, Lebanese immigrants are certainly not known to be lame unproductive slackers, so you guys got plenty of human potential 🙂
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Yeah I wanted to write: should we also boycott this medical information because it came from a country we don’t want to have dealings with?
I don’t think it’s all about funding. It’s about mentality as well. Some institutions in Lebanon have enough money and God knows we have enough rich people to donate for these things.
But they don’t. And the money that’s already there is kept for other purposes because the idea of “research” isn’t instilled in the minds.
And yeah, Lebanese expats are always accomplished. I guess that’s why French people think we’re all rich.
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“I said “Somebody should do something about that.” Then I realized I am somebody.”
― Lily Tomlin
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That somebody should be medicine faculties and research places. I am a student whose only access to research is via his faculty who doesn’t provide it.
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