To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
Remembering when Cuba was on the vanguard of medical research, and today's dismal reality in the time of COVID-19
Cuba today traffics its doctors abroad for the profit of the dictatorship while Cubans in the island do without. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic there are shortages in Cuba, and a regime that was slow to respond in a constructive manner leading to protests, and public calls for action. Meanwhile PBS is broadcasting Castro propaganda on Cuba's "vaunted" healthcare system in a program to air Wednesday titled "Cuba's Cancer Hope".
The hard reality is that Cuba's glory days of "cutting-edge" medicine pre-date the Castro regime. I know this first hand because as a child my pediatrician in Little Havana, in a modest office of Flagler, was Dr. Agustin Walfredo Castellanos, his patients used to call him "El Chino Castellanos". He was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1959 and 1960 by Colombia and Ecuador respectively. Dr. Castellanos described "the first practical method of angiocardiography, with which he studied several congenital malformations of the heart. Also, he designed the first automatic angiocardiographic injection device. He also pioneered the method of retrograde injection of contrast material into the aorta which was mainly used to diagnose patent ductus arteriosus." angiocardiography, according to Merriam Webster is "the radiographic visualization of the heart and its blood vessels after injection of a radiopaque substance.
Dr. Castellanos and his colleagues published the first important paper on the clinical applications of intravenous angiocardiography in the Archivos de la Sociedad de Estudios Clinicos in 1937. Cuban medicine prior to 1959 was not just groundbreaking in basic research, but also in public health. Professor James W. McGuire and Laura B. Frankel in their paper published in the Latin American Research Review, “Mortality Decline in Cuba, 1900-1959: Patterns, Comparisons, and Causes” found that “Cuba's progress relative to other Latin American countries at reducing infant mortality was even greater from 1900 to 1960 than from 1960 to 1995. During the earlier period, Cuba led all Latin American countries for which data are available at raising life expectancy and reducing infant mortality. From 1960 to 1995, by contrast, it came in fourth and fifth respectively.” Numbers don't lie, although the Castro regime would like to disappear them.
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