Coercing the Doctors?

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23300, 9 April 1941, Page 6

Coercing the Doctors?

On April 1 the president of the Auckland branch of the British Medical Association alleged that certain attempts to coerce doctors into working the Government’s general practitioner scheme had been made. “A mem-' “ber of the Government,” he said, had threatened doctors in an Auckland suburb that, unless they accepted cards, he would “ turn away their “work” with State employees to a new doctor who would be introduced: Again, alien doctors were being approached by “persons holding “ the highest Government positions ” and told that, since the Government had allowed them to enter the country and practise, they " must ” carry out the Government’s policy. These statements were repeated in one issued by the British Medical Association from Wellington, with the difference that the Minister for Health in person was said to have “ called an alien “practitioner to his office” and “reminded “ him,” pointedly, of the “ hospitality extended “ to him by the Government.” It is this allegation, in this form, that the Minister for Health, Mr A. H. Nordmeyer, at once denied. It was "preposterous and quite untrue,” he said—one of the “baseless charges” with which the British Medical Association was trying to recover “lost prestige.” It must be pointed out, however, that the Minister’s denial refers to a curious variant of one Auckland allegation, not to the original, and that it disregards the other. Further, between the issue of Dr. Drury’s statement in Auckland and the association’s statement in Wellington about a week elapsed: time

enough to check and substantiate the facts, if they had not been checked and substantiated already. First and last, the allegations were such as should not have been made unless the British Medical Association was able and ready to prove them. The Minister’s denial of course emphasises the obligation. The association should now produce sworn testimony, showing when, where, to whom, and by whom the coercion alleged was applied. If it cannot do so, it has blundered very badly. If it can, the Minister will be disastrously embarrassed. It need hardly be said that it would not matter two straw’s whether he had acted himself in the fashion described or had been represented by public servants.