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Mark Brauner

@doctormarkbrauner

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ER Doc, Author. Keynote Speaker.
41 years in Emergency Medicine. • Ethics • Humanity
🔗 doctormarkbrauner.com
📢 https://substack.com/@doctormarkbrauner

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Three physicians.

Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh. An orthopedic surgeon who died in Israeli custody.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. A pediatrician and hospital director who remains detained.

Dr. Marwan Al-Hams. A physician and health official responsible for helping coordinate Gaza’s field hospitals, now detained and largely absent from public view.

These are not statistics.

They are doctors.

Whether we agree on politics or not, physicians should not disappear into prisons without transparency. They should not die in custody without accountability. Medical neutrality is not a partisan principle. It is a human one.

If we remain silent when healthcare workers are detained, harmed, or killed, we weaken protections for physicians, nurses, medics, and patients everywhere.

These are not statistics.

They are physicians. #MedicalNeutrality
#ProtectHealthcareWorkers
#DoctorsForHumanRights
#GazaHealthCare
#PhysiciansForPeace by @doctormarkbrauner

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2 months ago

Gaza changed me.
Not politically.
Existentially.

I came home and started questioning almost everything.
My mortality.
My relationships.
My career.
How much of my life I had postponed while assuming there would always be more time.

I have my final night shift coming up soon after nearly forty years in emergency medicine. Probably close to 900 night shifts.

Nine hundred nights of trauma bays and chest pain and death notifications and exhausted fluorescent-light conversations at 3 a.m.

And somehow Gaza still shook me awake.

Because when you spend time inside a genocide, you stop believing the illusion that life is guaranteed.

You realize how fragile everything is.
How quickly a whole future can disappear.
How precious ordinary moments really are.

And this is happening to me while living in extraordinary safety and privilege.

Imagine what it does to the nervous system of a child living under drones.
Under hunger.
Under rubble.
Under the constant understanding that tomorrow is not promised.

It changed the trajectory of my life.

I decided to leave emergency medicine early in part because of what I witnessed there.

Not because I stopped caring.
Because I started caring about being fully alive before my own life is over.

I want less postponement.
Less fear.
Less sleepwalking.

More truth.
More presence.
More courage.

And honestly, I think if people truly understood the psychological and human intensity of what is happening in Gaza, it would change them too.

It should.#freepalestine🇵🇸 #humanrights #berniesanders #freegaza #emergencymedicine❤️ medicine by @doctormarkbrauner

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2 months ago

I worked as an emergency physician at Nasser Hospital in Gaza.

I am not a journalist. I am not a politician.

I am a doctor who saw what I saw.

This page is dedicated to Gaza, Palestine, genocide, starvation, medicine under siege, American complicity, and the human beings the world keeps trying to turn into numbers.

I will not look away. #Gaza #Palestine #NasserHospital #EmergencyMedicine #HumanRights by @doctormarkbrauner

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a month ago

The First Amendment was never intended to protect only speech we agree with.

It was written to protect unpopular ideas, political dissent, and the right to challenge those in power without fear that the government will redefine disagreement as a security threat.

Whether you’re conservative, liberal, libertarian, socialist, independent, or politically homeless should not matter.

The question is simple:

Should the government ever be allowed to blur the line between violent crime and lawful political dissent?

If your answer is yes, remember that history has shown those powers rarely remain confined to the people you dislike.

Read the evidence. Think critically. Challenge me if you disagree. But don’t surrender constitutional principles because they’re politically inconvenient.

The Constitution belongs to all of us.

#FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #Constitution #CivilLiberties #Democracy by @doctormarkbrauner

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3 days ago

Welcome.

I’m Mark, an emergency physician with 41 years of experience caring for people on what are often the hardest days of their lives. I’ve worked in emergency departments, disaster zones, refugee camps, and most recently inside Gaza.

This page is where medicine meets humanity. We’ll talk about emergency medicine, bioethics, artificial intelligence, healthcare, humanitarian crises, and the questions that matter most. Everything I share is grounded in science, evidence, firsthand experience, and compassion.

I’m not here to chase outrage or clicks. I’m here to earn your trust, tell the truth as honestly as I can, and build a community that believes every human life has equal value.

If that resonates with you, I’m grateful you’re here. Welcome.

#EmergencyMedicine #Medicine #Bioethics #Humanity #PublicHealth by @doctormarkbrauner

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5 days ago

🟧 1,000+ Days of Genocide. The Voices the World Must Hear.

For more than 1,000 days, Gaza’s healthcare workers have continued to save lives while enduring the systematic destruction of their healthcare system.

In this powerful livestream, physicians and healthcare workers from Gaza bear witness to what they have lived, how they continued to care for patients, and what the world must not ignore.

Presented by the Gaza Ministry of Health, with the support and sponsorship of Doctors Against Genocide (DAG).

Listen. Bear witness. Protect healthcare. Save lives.

#DoctorsAgainstGenocide #MedicineAgainstGenocide #Gaza #GazaMinistryOfHealth #HealthcareUnderAttack ProtectHealthCare EndGenocide by @doctormarkbrauner

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10 days ago

History does not move with the urgency of our grief.

It does not answer to election cycles, military victories, propaganda, or the ambitions of powerful men. It moves like a river, wearing away stone one drop at a time, until what once seemed permanent is remembered only as a warning.

Every empire has believed itself exceptional. Every nation has imagined that law, morality, or history somehow stopped at its borders. None were right.

Justice is often delayed. Sometimes by years. Sometimes by generations.

But delay is not defeat.

Truth has remarkable endurance. It survives censorship. It survives prisons. It survives lies. It survives those who mistake power for permanence.

And though generations may delay its arrival, they cannot forbid the dawn.

May we choose repentance before humiliation, courage before comfort, and our shared humanity before any flag. #Humanity #Justice #History #HumanRights #Conscience Peace Truth InternationalLaw NeverAgain Hope by @doctormarkbrauner

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11 days ago

I have taken care of children pulled from rubble.

I have watched families grieve over bodies that should never have been in a hospital morgue.

I have seen enough that I can no longer pretend this is simply another war.

Israel has never officially admitted it possesses nuclear weapons, yet there is broad consensus among independent experts that it does. It has also never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is therefore not subject to the same comprehensive inspection framework as many other nations.

That alone deserves global attention.

But what frightens me far more is who I believe controls those weapons.

After serving as an emergency physician in Gaza, after witnessing the consequences of this military campaign with my own eyes, and after years of studying the evidence, I have reached a conclusion that I know many will reject. I believe the current Israeli government has demonstrated a profound disregard for human life.

That is my conclusion. It is one I wish I had never reached.

My concern is no longer confined to Gaza. Every escalation involving Iran, Lebanon, and the wider region increases the risk of a conflict that could spiral beyond anyone’s control. Miscalculation between nuclear-armed or nuclear-backed states is not a regional problem. It is a global one.

History has shown us that arrogance, exceptionalism, and impunity are dangerous companions to military power.

No nation should be above international law.

No nation should be exempt from accountability.

And any nation possessing nuclear weapons should be held to the highest possible standard of transparency, restraint, and international scrutiny.

The stakes are no longer measured only in lives lost today. They are measured in the future of humanity itself. #Gaza #NuclearWeapons #InternationalLaw #HumanRights #NuclearNonProliferation MiddleEast WarAndPeace GlobalSecurity DoctorsAgainstGenocide NeverAgain by @doctormarkbrauner

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11 days ago

Yesterday I was told, again, that it’s unlikely I’ll be able to return to Gaza. After hearing the same thing from multiple humanitarian organizations, I’m beginning to accept that I may never walk back through the doors of Nasser Hospital.

What I miss isn’t the adrenaline. It isn’t the work itself. It’s the people.

Leaving Gaza was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done because I knew I was leaving behind colleagues, friends, and patients I had come to care about deeply. I had hoped I would see them again.

If there’s one thing I want people to take from this, it’s this: don’t let my story stop you.

If you’re an emergency physician, surgeon, nurse, anesthesiologist, respiratory therapist, paramedic, or other experienced healthcare professional, you may have an opportunity to serve where I no longer can. The need has not ended. Despite headlines about ceasefires, people continue to be injured, hospitals remain overwhelmed, and experienced humanitarian clinicians are still desperately needed. (⁠MSF UK)

Consider reaching out to organizations such as CADUS, UK-Med, HEAL Palestine, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), or the International Medical Corps to learn about current opportunities. Every organization has different requirements, and deployment opportunities change, but every skilled clinician who is willing to serve matters. (⁠UK Med)

If I can’t go back, then I hope someone else will. The people I came to love deserve to know that the world has not forgotten them. #Gaza #HumanitarianMedicine #EmergencyMedicine #GlobalHealth #MedicalVolunteers by @doctormarkbrauner

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14 days ago

Yes, I too watched how she so gingerly, heartbreakingly, cradled her son’s fleshless, severed skull. It is a #hellscape . Thank you for saying #neveragainisnow @officialannielennox by @doctormarkbrauner

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14 days ago

The United States has explicitly cited South Africa’s land policies and its genocide case against Israel while suspending assistance to the country. Now PEPFAR support is being withdrawn from a nation with the world’s largest population of people living with HIV.

We should be precise: the evidence supports the risk of hundreds of thousands of deaths in South Africa, not millions from this South Africa decision alone. The broader dismantling of American HIV programs worldwide, however, has been projected to cause more than four million AIDS-related deaths by 2029 if the lost funding is not replaced.

Governments may quarrel. Patients should not be made to die for those quarrels.

PEPFAR once revealed what was best in America: the belief that a person’s life mattered even when that person lived far away, was poor, or possessed no political power.

Using that same program as an instrument of punishment reveals something much darker.

#doctormarkbrauner #PEPFAR #SouthAfrica #GlobalHealth #MedicalEthics by @doctormarkbrauner

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15 days ago

For months I’ve tried to publish essays about what I witnessed as an emergency physician in Gaza.

Not essays about military strategy.

Not essays about politics.

Not essays about who should win the argument.

Essays about individual human beings.

Perhaps editors simply felt they weren’t the right fit. That’s their prerogative.

But I worry that our public conversation has become dominated by abstraction. We debate policy, borders, alliances, and legal frameworks, all of which matter. Yet those conversations can become detached from the people whose lives are at stake.

As physicians, we are trained to move in the opposite direction. We don’t begin with ideology. We begin with the person in front of us.

Every conflict eventually becomes a question of individual lives.

That is the story I will continue telling.

#doctormarkbrauner #Gaza #MedicalEthics #EmergencyMedicine #HumanityFirst by @doctormarkbrauner

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15 days ago