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When Jonathan Fine was 6 years old, his father gave him five dollars and suggested that he send it to help blind children in China. "That was the first time I was aware of anything except three meals a day and summer camp somewhere nice," he said.
"The knowledge opened up the world to me and influenced all my career choices," said Fine, who has died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged 86.
In 1981, when he was a director of a community health centre in Boston, Fine joined a medical delegation to Chile to investigate the case of three doctors who had disappeared during the Pinochet regime. He discovered where the doctors, supporters of Allende, were imprisoned and helped secure their release five weeks later. The delegation's report, published in the New York Times, described the doctors' detention as "a serious act of state repression." "That was pretty heady. It showed me a few people could get a megaphone and make a difference," he said.
Physicians for Human Rights
In 1986, working with a group of other doctors, he founded and became the first director of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), believing that doctors and other health professionals could bring unique skills to the investigation and documentation of abuses. "We have lives in our hands and take great care to report things as they are, to be...