Dr. Mark Brauner

Writing

Essays & Writing

Published work on humanitarian medicine, Gaza, emergency practice, and what it means to remain human in a profession that makes that difficult.

Mark Brauner writes from the emergency room, the disaster zone, and the bedside. His essays resist the triumphant physician narrative. They are interested in moral weight, in what medicine asks us to witness, and in the gap between what the system promises and what it can deliver. His recent writing has focused on Gaza, famine, and the ethical obligations of physicians in the face of atrocity.

Featured Essays

  1. 01The Face of the Other in GazaCommon Dreams · 2025I found faces, hundreds of them, of children, mothers, teachers, tired men with empty pockets and broken sandals. Each looked directly into my eyes and asked, without accusation or anger: Are you still human?
  2. 02Worse Than Fiction: Responding to a Mass Casualty Event in GazaCommon Dreams · 2025A firsthand account of responding to mass casualties at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, and what it reveals about medicine, atrocity, and the limits of bearing witness.
  3. 03The American ReckoningCommon Dreams · 2025On American complicity in Gaza and the moral obligations that follow from what we know and what we have funded.
  4. 04The Milk That Never Came: How Famine in Gaza Shatters the First Bond and the Soul of a NationPalestine Chronicle · 2025In Gaza, famine is not a threat. It is a reality measured not only in calories and corpses but in something far more intimate: the severing of the bond between mother and child.
  5. 05Enforce the Law: Trigger the Leahy Review Now Over IDF Abuses in GazaCommon Dreams · 2025A physician's argument for enforcing existing American law: the Leahy Act prohibits military assistance to foreign units credibly accused of gross human rights violations.
  6. 06Violence and Air-Dropped Aid in GazaCommon Dreams · 2025On the deadly paradox of air-dropped aid in a famine zone, and what it means when the mechanism of relief becomes another source of harm.

Academic Publications

Peer-Reviewed Work

  1. Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics · 2011

    Reactive Oxygen Species and LV Dysfunction

    Khan M, Brauner ME

    An investigation into the role of reactive oxygen species in left ventricular dysfunction, examining oxidative stress mechanisms at the cellular level.

  2. Academic Emergency Medicine · 2003

    Epinephrine Delivery Methods

    Brauner ME, Prange HP

    A study of intrapulmonary epinephrine delivery methods and their comparative efficacy in emergency resuscitation contexts.

Theater

Dr. Brauner's Snake Oil General

A play about medicine, charlatanism, and the thin line between the two. Dr. Brauner's Snake Oil General examines what happens when the theater of healing collides with its substance, and asks whether the performance of care and the practice of care are ever truly separate.

Completed