Nature Medicine | Spoonful of Medicine

Free at last!

A lesson for us all: when reason and logic don’t work, try bribery. After eight years in prison, the medics being held in Libya for allegedly infecting more than 400 children with HIV are free.

But their freedom has been bought rather than won, with the US and Europe helping to pay off the affected families and promising Libya millions, if not billions, of dollars in aid and debt forgiveness.

Many expected the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor to be freed five years ago, when expert virologists Luc Montagnier and Vittorio Colizzi submitted a report showing that the children had become infected before the medics ever set foot in Libya, and that the infections were almost certainly the result of poor hospital hygiene rather than sinister acts.

But the court threw out the report and refused to accept further international evidence, relying instead on a flimsy Libyan document that researchers say contained “a shocking lack of evidence” to slap the accused with a death sentence.

Just as children who misbehave shouldn’t be given treats, Libya shouldn’t be rewarded for acting up. With lives hanging in the balance, the international community couldn’t afford the diplomatic version of tough love. But now that the medics are on friendly soil, I think we should stop dangling cupcakes.

Uploaded on behalf of Cassandra Willyard, Nature Medicine’s news intern

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    Alan Dove said:

    We should just call this shameful incident what it was – terrorism. Libya, for those of us with long memories, is still run by one of the originators of modern terrorism. In this case, they kidnapped five foreigners, and released them when the ransom was paid. Nothing ambiguous about that.