March 18-24, 2004

city beat

No (Cuban) Cigar

ACCESS DENIED: Though still welcome near the National Constitution Center, the government barred medical ethicist Glenn Ellis from travelling to a conference in Cuba. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Local medical professionals are embargoed from attending an important meeting.

by Deborah Bolling

Last week, Glenn Ellis was crestfallen and perturbed as he made a flurry of early-morning calls to let family and friends know that his trip to Cuba had just been canceled.

Weeks earlier, Ellis had been invited to attend an international health conference in Havana. He had shelled out nearly $1,000 to a travel agency with longstanding ties to Cuba and was looking forward to the opportunity to commingle with colleagues. But just days before leaving, U.S. government restricted Ellis and nearly 75 American scientists and medical ethicists from attending the much-heralded Fourth International Symposium on Death and Coma. Among leaders in the field worldwide, the symposium is viewed as perhaps the most important on the topic.

Despite a history of strained relations with Cuba, travel to the small Caribbean nation from the U.S. for academic reasons -- and this particular symposium -- had been permitted. However, in a recent, sharp reversal of policy, the U.S. flatly refused to honor any further requests.

"The official government position is that it violated the embargo against Cuba," says Ellis, a Philadelphia-based health communications strategist and a member of the ethical committee at Mercy Hospital. "Since the symposium was being organized by the Cuban government, and we would be staying in a Cuban hotel, they felt that would be a violation."

The March 9-12 symposium was the fourth to be held in Cuba since 1992. Endorsed by the World Federation of Neurology, it had been planned for more than a year and was expected to cull experts from Cuba, Europe, Canada, South America and the United States for an in-depth examination of the cultural and ethical impact of death and dying.

"I was scheduled to give a presentation on case studies in hospital settings and provide some background on the cultural and ethnic beliefs about death and coma as it relates to African-Americans," Ellis says. "But during the review process, the State Department got involved, which, to my understanding, is not a normal step. Ultimately, this decision only affected United States attendees. Everyone else went."

For the past 43 years, the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba has been tenuous.

In 1959, after the Cuban revolution and the overthrow of President Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro and his rebel comrades declared Cuba a socialist state. While debate rages over the pros and cons of the Castro's regime, the country boasts of a 98 percent literacy rate and a universal health-care system. But Cuba's poor relations with America have solidified for numerous reasons, including Castro's close relationship with the former Soviet Union; the island's recognition of the Communist Party as its only legal political party; its military backing for guerrilla revolutions in African countries once colonized by Europe; and its allegiances with nations regarded as foes by the U.S.

Since 1960, an extensive trade embargo has been in place, and many American presidents, including George W. Bush, have gleefully envisioned the demise of the tiny, independent island.

Despite the embargo, though, every year thousands of Americans have been allowed to travel to Cuba, most often for educational or professional purposes or to visit family left behind. In 1999, then-President Bill Clinton even allowed cultural exchange licenses so that under special circumstances average Americans could make the trip. Last year, that license was eliminated when Bush accused Americans of abusing the privilege for pleasure trips, thereby contributing to the economic growth of Cuba -- and Castro.

Now, the embargo is receiving renewed attention. In a speech last October, Bush promised to ramp up limits on travel to Cuba, but indicated that visits to family members or for research would still be approved.

As established medical professionals, Ellis and his entourage expected to be permitted to travel to Cuba under standard licenses for academic research. But then word came down from the bureau that enforces restrictions on travel to Cuba, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, that the group had been denied.

A Treasury Department spokesperson says that she cannot comment on specific license revocations, but says the U.S. believed the Cuban government was too closely involved with the conference.

"The embargo has been ratcheted up in response to Castro's further oppression of his people," says spokesperson Molly Millerwise. "Even with all the dollars taken in from travel-related expenses to Cuba, the people who work in the hotels only get mere pesos. That money is funneled back into the Castro regime to prop up his military. This is not to punish Americans or the good people in Cuba, but rather to fuel the hope that they'll live a better life one day when Castro is out of power."

John Lizza, a member of the ethics committee of Lehigh Valley Hospital, says he's unhappy with the U.S. decision. Like Ellis, he had planned to go to the symposium.

"I actually attended this conference four years ago and there was no problem," says Lizza, who was to deliver a speech to the group on brain death. He says that he issued a barrage of e-mails to government officials, but got no satisfactory replies. "This symposium is the most significant meeting on this topic held in any international forum. This embargo utterly fails to discriminate between tourist-related travel and travel for bona fide educational, professional and humanitarian purposes -- the kind of travel the embargo was not intended to prevent. I was totally surprised."

For 25 years, Marazul Charters has facilitated legal travel between the U.S. and Cuba. Last year, the N.J.-based agency transported 35,000 people to the island, for both familial and professional reasons. Bob Guild, Marazul's program director, says that U.S. officials informed him late last month that the proper paperwork had not been filed in a timely way and that the Treasury Department did not view attendance at the symposium as a genuine opportunity to conduct legitimate research.

"The fact that they do not consider the possibility that you can do research at a meeting or a conference and then, as a professional, you can disseminate the products of that research is absolutely absurd," he says. "The U.S. has recently lifted travel restrictions on Libya. Does that country have free elections or a free-market system? The answer is no, but this is what we're demanding from Cuba. The disparity in those demands is remarkable to me."