‘Lancet’ Pleads For Thought

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30680, 20 February 1965, Page 15

‘Lancet’ Pleads For Thought

The medical profession’s leading journal the “Lancet” has appealed to doctors to think twice before undertaking to resign from the National Health Service.

"The profession has not yet tested the sincerity of the Government’s protestations by a direct approach, and its first approach is to be made with

a claim in one hand and a pistol in the other,” the “Lancet” said. “No Government could allow such a threat to be implemented,” the article warned. “Such thinking would be irresponsible and dangerous.” If general practitioners withdrew from the service in any numbers, the profession would be rent effectively and the damage might take years to repair. “If a solid majority withdrew, the difficulties for patients would be far greater than any negotiator has admitted,” the “Lancet” said. As an independent contractor, each practitioner was fully entitled, at three months’ notice, to leave the

National Health Service and to work elsewhere.

“On the other hand, we .believe that practitioners should not use their independence collctively as a weapon for mass pressure to secure their demands. . . .

“We hope that sense will prevail, and that doctors will think twice before undertaking to resign en masse—an action which would injure the profession and impair its standing with the public, without promise or even likelihood of helping to achieve its object,” the “Lancet” said.