Ethics & Ghosts

Are doctors too cautious about letting the public in on medical news? Like many another layman, Associate Editor Steven M. Spencer of the Saturday Evening Post believes that doctors too often try to hide behind the shield of "medical ethics" when, asked for legitimate news. (Sometimes with good reason: if a doctor gets more "personal publicity" than his conservative colleagues approve, he runs the risk of being drummed out of his county medical society.) In a polite but firm letter to the Board of Censors of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, published last week, Layman Spencer gave the doctors a piece of his mind:

". . . Some [doctors] seem to feel that nothing should be said in the public press about a new therapeutic, for example, until it has been 'fully proven.' But when is a drug 'fully proven'? . . . Sulfanilamide was not without its untoward side effects, and ultimately it was largely replaced by other, better chemotherapeu-ics. Yet in the meantime it saved many lives and prevented much suffering. Would those who charge the press with being 'premature' in its reports have denied the public information about sulfanilamide simply because it had some drawbacks?

"The disease which a patient is suffering may be incurable today, but his faith in medical science may help sustain him until the arrival of tomorrow's successful treatment.

"A physician who has made a notable contribution [to the progress of medicine] requests a writer, for example, to 'leave my name out' because his colleagues might accuse him of self-advertising. Or a doctor whose wide experience and standing in a certain, specialty give authority to his statements in a lay article may ask that such statements be used 'anonymously.'

"Now let us be realistic. Medical contributions are not made by anonymous spirits, nor are conclusions arrived at by a conclave of nameless ghosts. Medical progress has been the work of individuals and of teams of individuals. The public is as much entitled to know their names and to know something about them as it is entitled to such information about statesmen, writers, generals and atom-bomb makers."

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