A NEW HEALTH ERA SIR,—Lord Moran's article does a disservice
to the motives of many of the medical profession who opposed the manner in which the Act was brought into being, and sought solely to protect their patients, and whose forebodings the Act will confirm. Those very doubts expressed by him —on the future of private practice, whether the country would recover its prosperity, the shortage of hospital beds, nurses and specialists, and, above all,' whether the quality of the men themselves in pursuing their profession selflessly and with integrity would remain in ten years' time—are those very reasons for which the doctors were so rightly con- cerned throughout the controversy, in protecting their patients. He him- self admits .hat to these questions he has no satisfactory answer. They are the questions anxiously being asked by patients today. We fear this Act and its consequences to ourselves.
The whole affair has been unnecessarily sad. I write as a patient, who from the first has vigorously protested against the scurrilous attitude of the Minister of Health in daring to impugn the motives of members of this honourable profession. The matter would have been more diplomatically settled if the present Minister (himself no professional man) had been removed, and someone with more experience and wider humanity chosen to negotiate this difficult and ill-timed piece of legisla- ture. Meanwhile, as a patient, I have no confidence at all in the present Minister of Health, nor can I join irresponsibly in the Archbishop of
York's wishful thinking.—Yours faithfully, J. E. R. LADDIS. Weston, Bath.
Previous page
