Mr. Stassen's Granny
SIR,-1 must apologise for my intemperate references to Mr. Stassen in your issue of March 17th. Having just read his " Granny" I felt that way. I am also sorry that he has replied, because I am now forced to defend myself against the charge of casting unsupported aspersions.
Mr. Stassen points out that his figures are from official British sources. He gives the deaths in nine consecutive quarters from the Registrar General's return. He then says: "These are the statistics used in my article." Had he used these figures he would have found it difficult to make them mean anythipg except what they do mean. What he does is to compare the March quarter of 1948, the lowest in ten years, with the March quarter of 1949, higher, but still well below the average, and suggest that the National Health Service is " probably the principal cause " for this startling jump." This is not the way statisticians use statistics, In the same vein we might claim that the " startling drop " in the deaths during the first quarter of 1948 showed the determination of our grannies to keep alive till the millenium dawned in July.
Mr. Stassen says: " My report of the slight decline in the number study- ing medicine was based on the British Medical Journal." Had Mr. Stassen merely reported a decline in the number accepted for study I should have had no criticism to offer ; but by putting the figures between " there are signs of an unfortunate effect on the British medical profession itself and "some of the more ambitious plan to leave the country," he .uses the decrease in the number of students admitted to imply that it is due to a decrease in the number seeking admission. This is, of course, the reverse of the truth. Ten men and fifty women are applying for every vacancy in the London Medical Schools, and much the same position is found throughout the country.
He says, " It is almost impossible to be operated on for hernia in London without a year of waiting." In my beds at Guy's no man has had to wait longer than seven months for .a hernia operation and no woman more than two months ; in the beds of the assistant surgeons the delay is about half this time.
He says that his article was written for his fellow citizens, and not intended as criticisms of the decisions of the British people. His choice of the Reader's Digest upset this intention. I do not wish to be unjust to Mr. Stassen, nor do I wish to paint our Health Service as perfect or even very good, I can think of nothing more likely to improve it than informed and honest comment like that of Professor James Howard Means of Harvard in the Atlantic Monthly for March.—I am, etc.,
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