'Brain Drain' Concerns U.S.

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31169, 20 September 1966, Page 15

'Brain Drain' Concerns U.S.

ffrom

FRANK OLIVER.

N Z P.A

special correspondent >

WASHINGTON, September 19. : Britain is not the onlv nation to com- ■ plain about a “brain drain” to the United States It is reported that in one? New York hospital virtually! all resident physicians and in- i, terns are foreign, their nationalities including Chinese. ; Indian. Iranian, Pakistani and , Argentinian. 11 It is added that in a re- , search laboratory outside New York Citv at least ten scien-h lists and skilled technicians!, come from developing coun- ] tries. i 1

| The hard fact is that high American salaries and the high standard of living here are magnets drawing into the ; United States brains that are more urgently needed elseI where. The affluent American life annually is drawing thousands of the brainiest and besttrained men and women from areas where their skills are desperately needed and thereby defeating one of the main aims of American aid to .developing countries. The press reports that policy makers in Washington are becoming very concerned over i the brain drain from other countries to this one. The point is made by them that the unlimited demand for specialists and technicians here is siphoning off the very people needed in foreign

countries to make American aid there effective. In the 12-year period be- | tween 1949 and 1961, says a (United Nations report, well over 40,000 scientists and engineers emigrated to the United States, many of them from countries with small ! numbers of highly-trained people. Since 1961 the brain drain has increased beyond that rate and there is no sign of it slowing up. In the period 1964-65, 28 per cent of all interns and 26 per cent of all resident physicians in American hospitals were foreign graduates. The total was almost 11,000 doctors and three-quarters of the number were from developing countries. Some, of course, were educated in this country under a variety of American aid pro-

grammes and by grants from wealthy foundations, but once trained and skilled they preferred to stay here rather than return to the conditions and incomes of their homelands. Some did go home but found conditions unpalatable and made a bee-line back to affluent America. The United Nations report said that out of about 11,000 emigrants from Argentina over a given period, 50 per cent were professional men and technicians. The example is given of a British neuro-surgeon who. in the United States, will work in a first-class hospital with first-rate facilities and his starting salary will be three times what he received in England.