Hippocratic Oaths

Sir: There is nothing wrong with North American medicine [Feb. 21] that is not merely a reflection of the qualities of the society in which it develops. In fact, there is more common humanity in medicine than there is in society as a whole.

In a consumption-oriented society, is it any wonder that medicine is over consumed? In an impersonal society, is it to be expected that medicine will be thoroughly personal? If the poor are not as well treated medically as the wealthy, are they not also badly treated in every other way? If the physician makes a good income, is he not merely doing something that is praised in every other line of endeavor? Where technological ability has far exceeded the wisdom to use technology in the common interest, is it cause for wonder that medicine concentrates on the esoteric rather than the mundane? You are caught in a peculiar bind. You think that physicians should be better than other people (perhaps they should), and then you want to make them better by placing them under the control of society, which, from the original premise, is not as good as they.

COLIN HARRISON, M.D.

Vancouver, B.C.

Sir: I am surprised and concerned at your shallow, poorly researched and uninformed article on U.S. medicine. You have alternately, almost schizophrenically, represented the U.S. doctor as dedicated, ingenious, overworked and harassed, while at the same time suggesting that he is grasping, incompetent and unconcerned with his patients' needs. Physicians' fees have risen, but not out of proportion with the cost of living. Their disproportionate increase in income in recent years is due in large part to a massive increase in their patient load. This is due to rising population, Medicare, Medicaid, and, most importantly, to increasing patient respect and confidence in the physician. The fact that more physicians have not been produced by the medical schools is not because of A.M.A. obstructionism but because of the inability of private schools to finance additions to their facilities at an estimated cost of $80,000 per student. It has only been in recent years, with the all too late entrance of the Federal Government, that the schools have been able to significantly expand.

ROBERT S. GOULD, M.D.

Wellesley, Mass.

Sir: I'm glad my kids are too young to read your article. They think their daddy likes to make sick people well, that he's willing to take care of them whether they can pay or not, that he gets home late because he spent a lot of "unprofitable" time reassuring other mommies and daddies that their kids will get well, and that he can't go to the P.T.A. meeting because he's "too far behind in his journals." They think medicine is a noble way that their daddy earns a living, and that the Holy Cross Hospital, where he goes, is a life-saving hospital run by self-effacing sisters. If you'll dig beneath your slick but often misleading facts, you'll find out that they're right.

JANE SCHISGALL

Chevy Chase, Md.

Sir: Bravo! for the courage it took to write about America's outdated medical system. As a former medical technologist, and a disabled one for 18 years, there's nothing about hospitals and doctors that I don't know.

I was glad that you gave credit where it's due: to the Mayo Clinic for its group practice. Without its surgical and medical care, I would be long dead, left to the caprice of the medical societies of New York and Pennsylvania, with all their universities. They could take a few lessons in bedside manner from the plainsmen.

And the day medicine is extended to cover the handicapped, I'll vote Republican. That's a promise I never expect to keep, in view of the nit-picking of the Government and the A.M.A.

MARGENE BETTS

Norristown, Pa.

Sir: This laissez-faire jungle where the only right the patient has is that of paying the wildly nonstandard fee and where the doctor can literally bury his mistakes and be free to make new ones, just as fatally irreversible as the old ones, will end only when people shed their awe of that imposing facade the A.M.A. has so skillfully built and treat the practitioners of that not so arcane science like the technician every professional is.

JACK ELIEZER

Nanuet, N.Y.

Sir: I visualize medication of the future as being a combined effort by some well-selected doctors, the IBM corporation and some companies now working in the medical electronics field. The result would be a system whereby a patient is analyzed by a computer. The diagnosis could be verified by a doctor, and certainly the progress of the treatment would be supervised by him. Such an analysis would reveal a number of treatable malfunctions, many of which are not even tested for in a general checkup. Doctors would upgrade programs as required.

C. DEREK LINDSAY

Westport, Conn.

Love Thine Enemy

Sir: In your article about the World Council of Churches [Feb. 7], there are two statements about me that I would like to correct: 1) I passed only 14 years in Communist prisons, not 18. I have been in Nazi prisons, too. But I would not like to charge this to the Communists. 2) I am not anti-Red. Reds are men who must be loved. Christ died for them also. He has taught us to love even our enemies and torturers. They are keeping in jail tens of thousands of Christians in Red China, Russia and other countries. They torture them. They take children away from their parents if these teach them Christianity. But their tortures did not drive me into the madness of being anti-Red. Christians love their enemies, My whole life is dedicated to the conversion of Communists. I head a mission, called "Mission to the Communist World," which has this purpose.

PASTOR RICHARD WURMBRAND

Glendale, Calif.

Joe Sent Me

Sir: I was very interested in your article "Once More, Trouble in Berlin" [Feb. 21]. It was lucid and provocative; but you say, "Yakubovsky has a Btfsplkian habit of turning up just before something big happens." Who or what is "Btfsplkian?" Is it from Catch-22 or a recent novel? Please set me straight. I may not sleep for fear of Yakubovsky turning up in D.C. in some Jekyll guise. God forbid!

LEE A. MACVAUGH

Washington, D.C.

Btfsplkian (unpronounceable) adj. [Neologism, from Joe Btfsplk, a cartoon character in Al Capp's L'il Abner who is accompanied by a little black cloud and disaster wherever he goes] 1: Full of bad luck and imminent mishap or mischance for anyone in the vicinity. 2: Baleful; calamitous; pernicious; unpropitious; as in "Joe Btfsplk advised Hubert Humphrey"; "Joe Btfsplk attended a sailing party for the Andrea Doria."

Product of Evasions?

Sir: It is a far cry from spring fever that triggered the student strike at the University of Wisconsin [Feb. 21]. Contrary to what TIME would have readers believe, the student body of the university is not composed of a clump of rattlebrained, rabble-rousing radicals who, suddenly possessed by a rebellious restlessness at the turn of the seasons, chose to unleash their energies by disrupting classes to gain power in appointing faculty members.

The black students have stomached semester after semester of referrals to "higher authorities" and the broken promises of those authorities. The student strike was merely a product of these evasions. Rather than simply explain to the student body their position on the black demands, the government officials sent in 1,900 troops. The bayonets tacitly stated the reply. What TIME and the administration of U.W. fail to see is that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.

RITA FUCHSBERG, '72

University of Wisconsin

Madison, Wis.

Sir: You are quite mistaken in referring to 1,000 white Duke students who were gassed as supporters of the blacks. At least 80% of this group could be considered nothing more than curiosity seekers. Duke students may be concerned, but not that concerned. Now that the Durham police have left the campus, we, who had nothing better to do on a Thursday afternoon, may slip back into our complacency of books and basketball games. You credit us with too much humanity.

JOE PAYNE, '70

Duke University

Durham, N.C.

Sir: Our local chapter of S.D.S. (Students for a Democratic Society) has disbanded because of lack of interest in it here. Perhaps this helps prove that not all college campuses are in a state of turmoil today, and adds proof to the rumor that some students are still in college to learn.

JOHN D. MCDONALD, '71

Central Michigan University

Mount Pleasant, Mich.

Tragic Legacy

Sir: I did not know Richard Bunch, and I do not know why he was in the Presidio's stockade [Feb. 21]. I do know that killing a man in the manner you describe is contrary to those higher ethics to which all laws are subject. The code of the Hun is a tragic legacy and one unworthy of employment in the defense of America and her continuing promise of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

How proud Captain Lament must be of his unit and its achievements. How repugnant our America must seem to him.

ROBERT SLOANE WICKES

Hockessin, Del.

Key to Understanding

Sir: Your article "Capturing a Moon and Other Diversions" [Feb. 21] may appear entertaining or even flippant to some. But it will help persuade today's disenchanted student that science is not merely intellectually satisfying (and fun) but really relevant to problems that society faces.

Let me state plainly that I do not advocate moving a moonlet of Mars to the Earth. Discussing such a project is not the same as proposing it. There is no scientific obstacle to doing it, as every physics student knows. But neither is there any point to it, unless the benefits outweigh the costs. And to give proper scientific credits: mind-boggling rearrangements of the solar system have been discussed before; e.g., by Fritz Zwicky at Caltech and Freeman Dyson at Princeton. Regardless, the examination of the Martian moonlets in situ should become a scientific objective of the highest priority; it could be the key to understanding the origin of the solar system and especially of the inner planets.

But our greatest concern must be with our own planet. Here we face the danger that large-scale engineering projects which give us a short-term gain may carry with them long-term ecological consequences which are distinctly harmful. We must make sure, therefore, that our concern with the environment will keep pace with our technical capabilities. Human activities --whether by neglect or by accident or by intent--are constantly damaging the environment: Lake Erie might be called exhibit A; the Santa Barbara oil disaster, exhibit B; and there are many more examples. In addition, subtle changes are taking place in our atmosphere and oceans--with far-reaching but little-understood effects; e.g., on the Earth's climate. Solutions to these questions demand the best efforts of scientists from every discipline. In fact, one of the major benefits of planetary exploration will be a better understanding of the workings of the Earth.

S. FRED SINGER

Deputy Assistant Secretary

United States Department of the Interior

Washington, D.C.

Try a Little Tenderness

Sir: I am fed up to my armpits with this new cult for fighting marriages [Feb. 21]. May I suggest a better solution--like love? I once heard a definition of love that seems particularly apropos. Love is a condition where the happiness and well-being of the beloved becomes more important than that of one's self. It makes a marvelous marriage!

(MRS.) VIRGINIA MOORE

St. Charles, Mo.

Sir: It appears we need again be reminded that wagging a dog's tail will not make him friendly, putting tears in one's eyes will not make him sad, or standing his hair on end make him fearful.

A year ago [March 8, 1968], you were good enough to print an excerpt of my comments attempting to discredit the idea that disrobing a neurotic would produce anything more than a nude neurotic vis-avis rendering the inhibited less so.

Today the bad penny returns. Dr. Bach's implication that provoking couples to fight before a group-therapy referee will alter the basic repository of man's hostility sounds equally naive. As a psychoanalyst in practice, I cannot believe it.

SUMNER L. SHAPIRO, M.D.

Encino, Calif.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.