LORD MORAN put his foot in it good and proper
last week when he contrasted general practitioners unfavourably with specialists by asking how people who fell off the ladder could be considered the same as people who got to the top. He should know that it is almost as difficult for a specialist to enter general practice, if he wants to, as for a GP to become a specialist—as a great many disgruntled hospital senior registrars could have told him. In any case, the current adulation of the specialist at the expense of the family doctor has already proved an expensive mistake. The tendency to know more and more about less and less is bad enough in any field, but it is extremely dangerous in medicine; the division into self- contained and often rival specialist empires is doing great harm. Whatever Lord Moran may say, the general practitioner is the most important member of the national health service team; and if he is not, he ought to be.
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