BRITISH HEALTH SCHEME

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25537, 3 July 1948, Page 7

BRITISH HEALTH SCHEME

COMMENT BY B.M.A. PRESIDENT (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

(Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, July 1. Sir Lionel Whitby, Regius professor of physic at Cambridge University, and newly elected president of the British* Medical Association, in welcoming the agreement between the .B.M.A. and the Government on the national health scheme, said that the most potent factor hastening acceptance of such a scheme was the economic one.

Because of the advance of science and the high degree of specialisation, the cost of illness was now beyond the purse of the average person, “In the interests of hupianlty, treatment cannot be withheld on economic grounds,” said Sir Lionel Whitby. “It would be a travesty of justice were such treatment available only to the few rich people whom successive Chancellors of the Exchequer have permitted to survive.

“Yet, in common with many others, I am apprehensive about the future of medicine under the State, not so much on the question of inefficiency, frustration or even undesirable control, but on a mere subtle aspect—loss of the personal human touch without which the soul goes out of medicine.”