Ethics and investment funds

In September 2005 Reed Elsevier, publisher of The Lancet, sponsored the Defence Systems and Equipment international (DSEi) exhibition, one of the largest military exhibitions in the world. The editors of The Lancet were dismayed. The publisher's presence in the arms industry, they argued, “self-evidently damages its reputation as a health-science publisher” and they “respectfully ask[ed] Reed Elsevier to divest itself of all business interests that threaten human, and especially civilian, health and well-being.”1

In the same vein, MD Management Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of the CMA, is apparently investing in the armaments industry, according to Physicians for Global Survival.2 In a written response to a request from Physicians for Global Survival that MD Management provide its physician clients with alternative investment options, Robert Hewett, MD Management's president and chief executive officer, stated that the company “has not observed any demand for a restriction on investments in the armaments industry.”2 Really? One would presume that the need for such a restriction would be as obvious to the CMA as it was to the editors of The Lancet.

In any case, let me spell it out for MD Management. Please do not invest my money in corporations that profit from the sale of instruments of war.