ABSTRACT
The big medico-political controversy of the year centred around a report The Medical Effects of Nuclear War, prepared by the Board of Science and discussed by the Council at its meeting in March. In September 1983 Tony Grabham had almost nine months to run before his Chairmanship of Council ended, but according to the magazine Doctor speculation about the succession was rife within the British Medical Association (BMA). Tony Keable-Elliott thought the BMA should keep out of politics and stick to medicine and a number of other members agreed. The Annual Representative Meeting that year was due to be held in Dundee, a town linked with Nablus, a Palestinian town strongly associated with the Fatah movement, which was rabidly anti-Israeli. The BMA had decided that, failing a resolution of the constitutional issue, we would withdraw from the World Medical Association at the General Assembly in 1985.
