EMPHATIC PROTEST

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 111, 13 May 1939, Page 10

EMPHATIC PROTEST

BOYCOTT SUGGESTION

REPUDIATION BY B.M.A.

An emphatic protest against the action of the Minister in raising the question of possible boycott by the profession of those members serving under the maternity benefit regulations was made today by Dr. J. P. S. Jamieson, chairman of the National Health Insurance Committee of the New Zealand Branch of the British Medical Association.

"I cannot," said Dr. Jamieson, "allow such a serious allegation to pass without immediately repudiating it on behalf of the whole of the medical profession throughout New Zealand, and entering an emphatic protest against the action of the Minister in giving expression to it. The Minister states: — 'I have been informed that some practitioners fear that if they sign the contract in accordance with their own wishes, opinions, and consciences, they would run the risk of professional injury through deliberate non-co-opera-tion on the part of their fellow-prac-titioners.' So ill-founded is this fear in the Minister's own belief that he hastens to add: 'From my knowledge of. the medical profession I have no hesitation in stating my belief that neither the official organisation, nor any responsible section of the profession, would stoop to such methods.'

"As the Minister himself has no belief in the allegation then surely he had no right to put it forward," said Dr. Jamieson. "Yet he goes on to suggest methods for dealing with what he .knows to be an unthinkable and wholly imaginary situation.

" 'If as is most unlikely,' says Mr. Fraser, 'any irresponsible section or individual would be so misguided as to attempt any such retaliatory methods, then as soon as the atten-

tion of the Government was drawn to the fact steps would immediately be taken to combat such reprehensible' action, and the full protection of the State would be extended to the practitioners against whom such methods were used. The boycott weapon, dangerous at all times, and in all circumstances, would earn the reprobation of all decent people if applied in any form or under any pretext where the lives of mothers and babies were involved and possibly in danger.'

"How can this latter statement," commented Dr. Jamieson, "be reconciled with the Minister's previous expression of his disbelief, based as it is on his own intimate knowledge of the profession?. In ordinary justice the serious nature of the charge demands further particulars of the source and character of the Minister's information."

Dr. Jamieson concluded: "On behalf of the whole profession, I again repudiate the suggestion which implies unworthy motives to my colleagues, and have no hesitation in saying that the Minister's statement will be deeply resented by the profession and public alike. I will have something further to say /later on behalf of the association regarding the rest of the Minister's statement."