Doctor Embargo

"Professional birth control" is the current cry of U. S. Medicine in its war against surplus doctors (TIME, Sept. 12). One method of control is for U. S. medical schools to impede admittance of freshmen. For example, more than 600 applicants last week wanted to enter Western Reserve medical school. Only 75 got in. More than 700 applied at McGill; only 100 were admitted. Seven thousand of 13,000 candidates for all U. S. medical schools were refused admittance this year.

Another method of control is for examining boards to fail graduates of foreign medical schools. During the past five years only 47.1% of applying foreign graduates succeeded in getting State licenses.

Last week New York State's Board of Medical Examiners, one of the strictest in the land, shut New York's door tighter than ever. Only schools whose graduates have any chance to be examined in New York are the governmental medical schools of Austria, Germany, Holland, Hungary, the Scandinavian countries, England, Ireland and Scotland.*

Also privileged are Canada's great universities -- Alberta, Toronto, Queen's, Western Ontario, Dalhousie, Laval, Mc-Gill.

Hard hit were some 1,500 U. S. students last week en route for European medical education. They were the more enterprising of the 7,000 students refused U. S. medical education this autumn. But, promised Dr. Harold Rypins, secretary of the New York board, the 1,500 will not forever be stigmatized with medical illegitimacy, if next year they return to the U. S. and succeed in wangling admittance to U. S. schools.

Hard hit also are steamship lines, to which the transport of students in these times is a comparatively big business.

*But not Scotland's Royal Collides, Anderson College of Medicine, St. Mungo's College.

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