INTERNAL UNREST may require the expertise of physicians other than gastroenterologists these days. Numerous countries are experiencing varied forms of political upheaval, some of which lead to injury and/or death among the population and subsequent medical investigation. Three American physicians who visited Soviet Georgia in midMay following nationalist demonstrations in Tbilisi, the capital city, have now recounted their experience.
The American physicians who went to Georgia are Barry H. Rumack, MD, director of the Rocky Mountain Poison Center and professor of toxicology and of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver; Jennifer Leaning, MD, chief of emergency services at Harvard Community Health Plan and attending physician at Harvard Medical School's Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston; and Ruth A. Barron, MD, assisting attending psychiatrist at McLean Hospital and a Harvard Medical School faculty member.
At the request of Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov and the invitation of health authorities