Standards for Doctors

* Unnoticed by the majority of the public, radical changes have been set into motion to diminish or “dumb-down” the medical profession.

The UCLA medical school (and many others) no longer issues grades to medical students. They merely pass or fail. The quality of M.D. recipients will decline as a result.

Medical schools across the nation have acquiesced to the Clinton executive fiat that the ratio of 70% specialists to 30% general practitioners must be reversed to 30% specialists and 70% generalists. Again, a diminution of standards.

A general practitioner of the 1930s could keep abreast of medical advances but this no longer is true! It takes a cardiologist to keep up with the advances in cardiovascular diagnosis and therapy. The same applies to neurology, surgery, and other specialties.

Unchallenged, these changes will regress our standard of medical care by 50 years in short order.

Write your congressman now.

DONALD R. STEELE, M.D.

Newport Beach