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From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Credentials, State vs. private
Message-ID: <139@l5.uucp>
Date: Sat, 21-Sep-85 14:59:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5.139
Posted: Sat Sep 21 14:59:11 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 08:20:02 EDT
References: <152@gargoyle.UUCP> <28200053@inmet.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco
Lines: 29

In article <1237@ihlpg.UUCP> tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum) writes:
>OK, I can research my personal physician's credentials.  What happens, however,
>when I need emergency medical care, or if I get sick when away from home.
>I want to know that all practicing doctors, not just mine, have met some
>minimal competency standards.  State liscensing is not perfect in this
>regard, but it is better than nothing.
>-- 

The question is, what makes it better than the Rich Rosen certification of
only objective and materialist physicians? Or the Stanford Medical School
certificate of graduation? Or the Consumer's Report on Physicians in the
State of (say) California?  Right now I have no way of knowing whether any
given doctor graduated first or last in his class, or whether he is a
brilliant theoretician who can do splendid medical research but who has
difficulty in coming up with an accurate diagnosis. 

The tendancy to rely on state certification leads to apathy on the part of
the public.  The number of people, who, when faced with a serious medical
decision (say to either have a mastectomy or to have chemotherapy instead)
do not get a second, thrid and forth opinion is astonishing. Clearly they
believe that either the first opinion they got was the only one (based on
a belief that all doctors are minimally competant and couldn't be wrong on
such an issue) or that their first doctor was in some way better than other
doctors.  This is frightening.

-- 
Laura Creighton		(note new address!)
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa