Doctors refuse posts in 'vote' against name

Ten doctors have voted with their feet by refusing to take up honorary professorial posts at the University of Hong Kong's Li Ka-shing Faculty of Medicine in a continuing protest against the renaming of the city's oldest medical school.

Cheung Wing-yung, a plastic surgeon and consultant at Kwong Wah Hospital, said doctors received the regular invitation on January 4, asking if they wanted to teach part-time as honorary clinical assistant professors at the faculty.

But he and nine others declined, Dr Cheung said.

The doctors said they would continue teaching students as and when the need arose. They vowed to continue taking action to scrap the renaming of the faculty after the property tycoon, even if it took 'forever'.

They also read out an open letter yesterday, calling on HKU council chairman Victor Fung Kwok-king to step into the debate.

Asked how refusing to accept an honorary title would make a difference, Dr Cheung compared the medical alumni campaign to the 1943 'white roses' movement in Nazi Germany.