THE BREATH OF LIFE
SIR,—Dr. Timbury is right. The Spectator has a bad record for giving space to prejudiced and ill-informed comment on medical matters by faddists. Such articles as the recent one on respiratory disease do harm, not only because they cast doubt on the reliability of your articles on other subjects, but also because they make potentially cruel reading for the unfortunate sufferers from these common, intract- able and very distressing complaints. The disservice you do is not only to the medical profession—which does not really matter so very much—but to the patient.
It does not seem to have occurred to you that doctors with any professional ambition at all arc crying out for a personal discovery of the magnitude of the one you claim to have made. Their own self-interest, to put it no higher, is a powerful motive for them to test any sensible hypothesis and emerge as the benefactors of hundreds of thousands of desperate patients. What can possibly lead you to suggest that the up-and-coming young doctors in hospital practice could afford to neglect your hypothesis if it showed the remotest chance of success, when to investigate it properly and prove its merit would lead to so much personal glory and professional advancement for themselves? Where are these professional ogres who conspire against the patient, and what could possibly be their motive? Is it seriously suggested that, in these days of a fee-free service, there are doctors who deliberately keep the patients ill?
Some of the fatuous questions from J. M. Knowles about the pharmaceutical industry are only worth consideration because you printed them: (I) 'Do the doctors approach the claims of those other innovators, the pharmaceutical firms, in the same way?' (i.e. by demanding properly controlled clinical trials). Answer: Ycs. They must, and do. Otherwise they would be professionally incompetent and negligent. The fact that a profit-seeking industry very occasionally manages to slide a product into the market, making spurious but apparently well- substantiated claims for it. only testifies to the immense persuasive power of a large army of very clever, full-time salesmen who unscrupulously prey on the doctor's desire to do everything possible for his patient.
(2) 'If the latest drugs may be prescribed without exhaustive trials, why cannot Captain Knowles's methods be tried in the same way?' It apparently needs spelling out. Your correspondent is trying out a debating trick that would not fool the readership of a mass-circulated tabloid Either he believes drugs—and methods—should not be properly in- vestigated (in which case he should say so and we could all go home); or he believes they should, at which point his and his namesake's pants are down. If this is the best the Spectator can do, Lord help chemistry and physics and any other branches of science when you start giving them some coverage What a dismal prospect!
Blackheath, SE3
JOHN DOBBIN°
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