The June 10, 2000 issue of the British Medical Journal reports that on March 9, 2000,doctors in the Israel Medical Association went on strike to protest a new four-year wage contract for doctors. Since going on strike, the death rate in Israel has dropped considerably according to a survey of Israeli burial societies.

"The number of funerals we have performed has fallen drastically," said Hananya Shahor, director of Jerusalem's Kehilat Yerushalayim burial society.

"This month, there were only 93 funerals compared with 153 in May 1999, 133 in the same months in 1998, and 139 in May 1997." Meir Adler, who manages the Shamgar Funeral Parlour says, "There definitely is a connection between the doctors' sanctions and fewer deaths. We saw the same thing in 1983 (when the doctors applied sanctions for four and a half months)." There is one town in Israel where the death rate has remained constant, the town of Netanya. Netanya has only one hospital and the doctors there signed a no-strike clause with their contract and did not participate in the country-wide sanctions.

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It's been stated that many people owe their lives to the fact that they couldn't get to a physician. This is from the London Times:

"Modern medicine is occasionally quite capable of killing people. A remarkable example of this is trauma. Proportionately more soldiers died in Vietnam than in the Falklands conflict because the doctors got to the Vietnam wounded very quickly. In Vietnam, helicopter evacuation of casualties was speedy. Transfusions were rapidly given. Bleeding soldiers were wrapped up and kept warm. But in the Falklands, helicopter evacuation was often impossible in appalling weather. Doctors could not reach soldierson the moors to give transfusions. And the weather was bitterly cold.

"The result was that many casualties in the Falklands with seemingly fatal injuries survived. Without a blood transfusion, clots preventing bleeding were not dislodged and haemorrhage was less severe. The cold weather, added to the cooling that the body itself produces in shock, slowed metabolisms and people survived."