Iw qw qw w - w w -'V w~e . w . __ ,W-- -v W,------- - W-v W- MH- W c:d . *. an PDs 0 NH~upasgn.~a~n~.~pnw5~nnPI' -" s . - - .- S ... The Other Side of the Wall By Pauline Lewis MIH SUppoflfor NI nd Pht'S WN lCsnnpetngts eachPrsietAwards 4w 1 su hal Dr. Koenig standing in his lab. His research will be greatly hindered by the departments lack of funding In the future. y life in the West Bank was a lot less dramatic than you might imagine. I wasn't kidnapped and I didn't see any gun battles in the street. I went to university every day, ate delicious food and traveled throughout vari- ous cities in the area. This is not to say that life is normal in this part of the Palestinian Territories. Based on the freedoms I had taken for grant- ed in the United States, I was not prepared for the absence of certain civil liberties there. One such free- dom was to move freely to school and work. Israeli military check- points litter the roads throughout the West Bank, and if you live 15 miles away from school or work, chances are you will have to go through at least two or three of them. Exiting your vehicle, you are herded to a barb-wired waiting zone, all under the cold gaze of an Israeli soldier and his or her automatic weapon. Needless to say, this was terrifying for someone who is not comfort- able with guns. If you're lucky, your American passport will get you off the hook,or maybe one of the young Israeli soldiers will think you're cute and let you pass without interroga- tion. But for most Palestinians, the checkpoints are a daily humiliation and reminder of the military occu- pation under which they live. These checkpoints are one of the few exchanges that Israelis and Palestinians share, a phenomenon that goes to the root of the problem in the conflict This brief interac- tion leaves the Palestinians view- ing the Israelis as nothing more than military monsters, and leaves the Israeli soldiers suspecting each Palestinian as a potential suicide bomber. There is a wall, both figuratively and literally, between the Israelis and their Palestinian neighbors, and this prevents both sides from understanding the other whom they consider the enemy. But during my stay, I was lucky enough to meet a Palestinian woman who saw the humanity on the other side of the barbwire. 'Abeer was a member of my host family, a mother of four with a warm smile. Once over coffee, she asked my friend, Ron, if he wanted to go to Tel Aviv. Ron is an anti-Zionist Jew who is extremely critical of Israeli policies toward Palestinians and of average Israe- lis who he views as reprehensible for either supporting those policies or not protesting them. So when asked if he would like to travel to Israel, Ron said bluntly, "No, I do not like Israelis." 'Abeer looked at Ron like he was crazy, and asked him, "Why?!" Not waiting for an answer, she immediately began to defend Israelis, saying "They are just like us. They have problems too, they even have more problems than we do. You know, I feel sorry for them. Do you think they enjoy forcing people out of their homes? They are just people too, and yet they are in a situation where they have to do had thin s" I was stunned at this moving defense of Israeli soldiers by a Palestinian mother. 'Abeer went on to tell the story of how she first began to see that the Israelis were people, too, and not a sub-human enemy. "Our father was very sick with cancer when I was 14 years old. My nine-year-old brother had been up by the road throwing stones at soldiers. When he ran back to our house, the soldiers began to chase him to arrest him. When the sol- diers found our house, they came in to seize him. But then they saw my father, who was clearly very sick and dying. They looked at my father, and looked at my brother and told us that they would not arrest my broth- er because of our sick father. Then they left. I knew at that moment that these soldiers were people too, and that they and the other Israelis have the same feelings that we do." It was incredible to hear her express such empathy and even sympathy with the Israelis. When it all comes down to it, we all are human. And while it's easy to criti- cize and condemn, it is much more LSA senior Pauline Lewis spent her summer in Palestine. cal research was that it took too long for biomedical research at the basic level to translate directly into results for medical treatment. He also believed that the nation needed more clinical researchers. To address these issues, he developed a program Attention Students! Meet the Regents!. You are invited to meet informally with members of the Board of Regents at a RECEPTION Thursday, September 21, 2006 10:30 -11:30 a.m. Wolverine Rooms Michigan Union Light refreshments will be served called the "Roadmap Initiative," which is largely based on a new award system called the Clini- cal and Translational Science Award. The CTSA is designed to get current clinical research centers, which operate under an older model, to develop a new, more effective model. He has proposed that about 1.5 percent of the NIH budget - $420 mil- lion - be set aside for this pro- gram, although currently only 0.8 percent is currently desig- nated for it. Under better times, the proposal might not have been as controver- sial. But a large number of basic scientists feel like this money will inevitably go to waste. In the same editorial quoted earlier, Marks voiced his con- cern that the NIH is already wasting too much money on poorly structured clinical stud- ies. In the editorial, he points to a $400 million study "proclaim- ing that high-fat diets do not increasethe riskof disease." Marks snidely wrote that while the study was probably designed "by a committee of well-intentioned experts ... the NIH should not fund large clini- cal studies that divert hundreds of millions of dollars away from hypothesis driven scientific research; pharmaceutical com- panies should." Some would argue that this experiment isn't unusual. In August, John Ioannidis pub- lished an essay titled "Why Most Published Research Find- ings Are False," in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal. The essay is currently the third most popular article on the PLoS medicine website. Marks is not nearly as critical as Ioannidis of the current state of research, but his Marks's editorial is still heavily critical of Zerhouni's initiative. In his editorial, he issued four solu- tions to the current problems the NIH faces: 1) Increase congressional support. 2) Shelve the roadmap initia- tive. 3) Have pharmaceutical compa- nies fund large clinical studies. 4) Revamp the process for funding established researchers. Marks's points have inspired a lot of debate among biomedical researchers. Many basic scien- tists have taken his side, giving their support to the current sys- tem based on investigator-initi- ated research. The ROl grant, the primary award for indepen- dent investigation, is based off hundreds of years of the scien- tific tradition, in the pattern of Pasteur, Newton, Da Vinci and other historic scientists. The vast wealth of resources bio- medical research draws upon is hated in the tradition of science for science's sake. Marks, and many other basic scientists, jus- tifiably feel that this established productive to understand, and to try and see ourselves in the other's position. Labeling all Israelis as war criminals is just as wrong as label- ing all Palestinians as terrorists. Fighting fire with fire is no way to go about ending the generaliza- tions, the enemization or the result- ing violence. So, thank you 'Abeer, for being able to put yourself in the boots of the Israeli soldier. Perhaps on my next trip to Israel, Iwill meet an Israeli soldier who can put his feet in your shoes. Pauline is an LSA senior and can be reached at plucylew@ umich.edu I I a : %: --OVA ___ 0 " - _- =-- - - _R_:%: _ , , - - - N At tention Students! Meet the Regents! You are invited to meet informally with members of the Board of Regents at a RECEPTION Thursday, September 21, 2006 10:30-w 11:30 aim. Wolverine Rooms Michigan Union Light refreshments will be served Lewis sightseeing during her time in Palestine.