Frances Ames

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Frances Rix Ames (born April 20, 1920 in Pretoria , † November 11, 2002 in Cape Town ) was a South African neurologist, psychiatrist and human rights activist. She became known to the public as the head of the medical ethical investigation that was to shed light on the circumstances surrounding Steve Biko's death. Civil rights activist Biko died of lack of medical care after being tortured in a police station. The South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC) had refused to hold accountable the chief district doctor and his assistants who treated Biko. Frances Ames and five colleagues raised funds and fought against the medical establishment in South Africa for eight years. Ames was putting her personal safety and career at risk. The case was eventually heard by the South African Supreme Court and ruled in Ames' favor in 1985.

youth

Frances Ames was born on April 20, 1920, the second of three daughters of Georgina and Frank Ames at the Thaba Tshwane military base in Pretoria . She grew up in poverty. Her grandmother had been a nurse in the Second Boer War , and her mother had also become a nurse. Ames never met her father; he had left his mother with three children. Since the mother was unable to provide adequate care for the family on her own, Ames spent part of her childhood in a Catholic orphanage. There she once contracted typhus . Later the mother took the children back to her home and moved with them to Cape Town, where Frances attended the Rustenburg girls' school. She then enrolled at the University of Cape Town , where she did a bachelor's degree in medicine in 1942.

Medical career

Ames did an internship at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town , studied medicine and worked as a general practitioner in the Transkei . In 1964 she became the first woman to successfully complete her studies in Cape Town. In 1976, Ames became head of neurology at Groote Schuur Hospital. In 1978 she became an associate professor. She retired in 1985 but continued to work part-time at Valkenberg and Alexandra Hospital as a lecturer in psychiatry and mental health. In 1997 she became Associate Professor of Neurology at UCT . In 2001 she was awarded an honorary doctorate. According to Pat Sidley of the British Medical Journal , Ames “never got a full professorship. In her opinion, that was because she was a woman. "

The death of Steve Biko

South African human rights activist and former medical student Steve Biko was arrested by security police in Port Elizabeth on August 18, 1977 . He was held for 20 days. Sometime between September 6th and 7th, Biko was beaten and mistreated so badly that he fell into a coma. Frances Ames and her associates suspected that chief district doctor Benjamin Tucker and attending doctor Ivor Lang, along with the police, were involved in covering up the mistreatment. Biko succumbed to his injuries on September 12, 1977. According to a report in the South African Medical Journal from 2012 "there were clearly ethical offenses on the part of the doctors responsible."

The South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC; German about: "South African Medical-Dental Council"), supported by the Medical Association of South Africa (MASA, German: "Medical Association of South Africa") refused to allow the district doctors in the Biko case discipline. Two medical groups then made formal complaints to the SAMDC. The reason for the complaint was a lack of professional ethics on the part of the treating doctors. Both complaints reached the South African Supreme Court. The aim was to get the SAMDC to conduct a formal investigation into Lang and Tucker's understanding of medical ethics. One of the complaints was filed by Frances Ames and Trefor Jenkins and Philip Tobias ( Witwatersrand University ). The second complaint came from Dumisani Mzana, Yosuf Veriava ( Coronationville Hospital ), and Tim Wilson ( Alexandra Health Care ). In addition, the legal representative of the Biko family filed a claim for damages for the failure to provide support in investigating the death and against the two district doctors.

Because Ames and the other medics requested an examination of members of their own class, they were charged with treason. Ames ran into professional difficulties with her manager and some colleagues asked her to drop the complaint. Ames received threatening letters and her safety was endangered by pursuing the complaint. The medical associations “closed their ranks to support colleagues who worked with the security police to cover up the torture and deaths of prisoners. They also tried to silence and discredit other medical professionals who campaigned for human rights and the prosecution of colleagues ”- according to the authors of the book An Ambulance of the Wrong Color: Health Professionals, Human Rights and Ethics in South Africa.

After eight years, the South African Supreme Court upheld Ames' group's complaint. The case forced regulators to reverse their decision. The two doctors treating the Biko case were punished and major reforms in the medical field followed. According to the South African Medical Journal , the case played an important role in raising awareness of medical ethics among the medical profession in South Africa.

After apartheid ended in 1994, Ames testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about her work on the Biko case.

Cannabis research

In 1958 Ames researched the effects of cannabis . She published her results in the British Journal of Psychiatry in the article “A clinical and metabolic study of acute intoxication with Cannabis sativa and its role in the model psychoses” (“A clinical and metabolic study of acute intoxication due to Cannabis sativa and its importance in psychoses induced for experimental purposes ”). Her work is widely cited in the scientific literature on cannabis. She was an opponent of the war on drugs . Ames was able to observe on her patients in the hospital how cannabis ( known as dagga in South Africa ) relieved the spasms of multiple sclerosis patients and helped paraplegics . She became one of the first advocates of legalizing cannabis as a medicine . In the 1990s she continued research on cannabis. Together with David J. Castle of St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne , she published several articles on cannabis-induced euphoria and the effects of cannabis use on the brain.

Private life

Ames was married to journalist David Castle, who wrote for the Cape Times . The couple had four sons. In 1967 Castle died unexpectedly. After his death, the housekeeper Rosalina was of great help in coping with everyday family life. Frances Ames wrote about this in her 2002 autobiography, Mothering in an Apartheid Society.

death

Ames suffered from leukemia for a long time at the end of her life . Before her death, she said in an interview: "I'll keep going until I fall over." She worked as a part-time lecturer at Valkenberg Hospital until shortly before her death. On November 11th, 2002 she died at home in Rondebosch . Greg McCarthy made an eulogy on behalf of the UCT Psychiatric Department. Ames' ashes were mixed with hemp seeds at her request and scattered outside the Valkenberg Hospital.

legacy

South African neurosurgeon Colin Froman described Ames as a “great, unorthodox champion of the medical use of marijuana as a medicine, long before today's interest in it” wrote JP van Niekerk of the South African Medical Journal : “Frances Ames led the way with conviction and example ". The story has shown her commitment to the trial of Steve Biko's death as correct.

This mission led to extensive medical reforms in South Africa. The medical associations from the apartheid period were dissolved and replaced because they had not fulfilled their medical responsibilities. According to van Niekerk, this was “the most lasting change in the South African medical system: in the event of a conflict of conscience, the role of the medical professional was clarified. Today this issue is set out in the code of conduct of the South African Medical Association and in the legal interpretations of medical duties. "

Archbishop Desmond Tutu praised her as "one of the few doctors who rose up against the apartheid regime and brought doctors to justice who allowed human rights violations."

In recognition of her services to human rights in South Africa, the then President Nelson Mandela awarded Ames the Star of South Africa in 1999 .

Publications (selection)

  • Mothering in an Apartheid Society (2002)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Gerald Shaw: Obituary: Frances Ames. In: The Guardian. November 22, 2002, accessed May 5, 2019 .
  2. a b c d Frances Ames - Human Rights Champion. In: South African Medical Journal. January 2003, accessed May 12, 2019 .
  3. ^ Ina van der Linde: A woman of substance. (PDF) In: South African Medical Journal. November 1995, accessed May 5, 2019 .
  4. a b c Pat Sidley: Frances Ames . In: BMJ: British Medical Journal , 325 (7376), December 7, 2002, p. 1365, PMC 1124818 (free full text)
  5. a b c Caroline Richmond: Frances Ames . In: The Lancet . 361, No. 9351, January 4, 2003. doi : 10.1016 / S0140-6736 (03) 12105-8 .
  6. Frances Ames - Human Rights Champion. In: South African Medical Journal. January 2003, accessed May 5, 2019 .
  7. ^ David M. Dent, Gonda Perez: The place and the person: Named buildings, rooms and places on the campus of the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town. In: South African Medical Journal. 2012, accessed on May 5, 2019 .
  8. ^ Breier, Mignonne; Angelique Wildschut (2006). Doctors in a Divided Society: The Profession and Education of Medical Practitioners in South Africa . HSRC Press, ISBN 0-7969-2153-9 , p. 61. "Frances Ames, first woman professor in the UCT Medical School, who was appointed professor of neurology in 1976." See also in "Truth & Reconciliation NRF project report" , Chapter 2, p. 72: "At UCT, however, a ceiling existed and it was not for years before a women was appointed as full professor. Frances Ames seems to have been the first, appointed as Professor of Neurology in 1976. “Note: Ames never got a regular professorship.
  9. a b c d Passing of UCT legend Frances Ames . In: Monday Monthly . University of Cape Town, 21 (35), November 15, 2002.
  10. ^ A b Solomon R. Benatar, David Benatar: From Medical Manners to Moral Reasoning: An Historical Overview of Bioethics in the University of Cape Town's Faculty of Health Sciences. (No longer available online.) In: South African Medical Journal. June 1, 2012, archived from the original on March 29, 2015 ; accessed on September 5, 2019 (English).
  11. ^ L. Smith: Not Much Changed since Biko's Death. In: The Mercury (South Africa). September 13, 2012, accessed May 5, 2019 .
  12. a b c d Trevor Grundy: Frances Ames; Human rights activist who battled for justice after the death of Steve Biko in South Africa. In: The Herald (Glasgow). November 27, 2002, accessed May 5, 2019 .
  13. ^ A b c Laurel Baldwin-Ragaven, Leslie London, Jeanelle De Gruchy: An Ambulance of the Wrong Color: Health Professionals, Human Rights and Ethics in South Africa . Juta and Company, 1999, ISBN 1-919713-48-4 , pp. 91-100.
  14. Biko doctors: Verdict 'lenient' . In: Weekend Argus . July 6, 1985.
  15. ^ SAIRR : Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1978 . Johannesburg 1979, p. 120
  16. ^ Greg McCarthy: Frances Rix Ames . SAMJ forum. In: South African Medical Journal , 93 (1), January 2003, p. 48; accessed on May 12, 2019
  17. a b c J P de V van Niekerk: The power of one good person. In: South African Medical Journal. January 2003, accessed May 12, 2019 .
  18. ^ A b Catherine Myser: The Social Functions of Bioethics in South Africa . In: Bioethics Around the Globe . Oxford University Press, 2011, ISBN 0-19-974982-5 , pp. 137-139.
  19. Frances Ames: Great Debates: Cannabis sativa - a plea for decriminalization . (PDF) In: South African Medical Journal , 85 (12), (December 12, 1995, pp. 1268-1269. Also: Sboros, Marika (January 10, 1996). Curseor blessing-the flourishing dagga controversy. The Star .
  20. Chris Bateman: Get pragmatic about pot (PDF) South African Medical Journal , 90 (8), August 2000, pp. 752-753.
  21. ^ A b Colin Froman: The Barbershop Quartet: A Surgical Saga . Trafford Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1-4120-4725-0 .
  22. David Castle, Robin Murray, Deepak Cyril D'Souza Marijuana and Madness: Psychiatry and Neurobiology . Cambridge University Press, (2009) [2004], ISBN 978-1-107-00021-6
  23. ^ Tale of two mothers in a divided society. University of Cape Town, May 28, 2002, accessed May 19, 2019 .