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49 Medico-Legal J. 3 (1981)

handle is hein.journals/medlgjr49 and id is 1 raw text is: THE MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL Founded 1901 198J Vol.XL IX Part One EDITORIAL The Reith Lectures That Mr. Kennedy should have ruffled some medical feathers was perhaps inevitable. To that extent at least he has harmed relationships between the legal and medical professions which is unfortunate. If however his criticisms were to lead to an improvement in the service to the public, then any inter-professional disharmony he has caused is of minor consequence. But are his criticisms likely to prove beneficial? Much of what he said has been said often enough before though the medical profession will not, it is thought, accept that all the faults of which Mr. Kennedy complains lie at their door. Is it true that he who draws the line between illness and health achieves great power over the individual declared to be ill, and is it true that doctors have used medicine to increase their power base rather than to serve their patients? If one believes such to be the case, how then to explain the fact that doctors have for years been endeavouring to rid themselves of the duty placed on them in the National Health Service of providing certificates of unfitness for work? Doctors - general practitioners in particular - are with Mr. Kennedy in considering that this is a social and not a medical function. They have told successive governments that they do not see this as part of their job, and successive governments have been deaf to their pleas seeing no practical alternative. Unfortunately when Mr. Kennedy says We must become the masters of medicine not its servants, he does not tell us of his solution to this problem. It is indeed difficult to see just how the individual can be helped by the increased consumerism in the Health Service which Mr. Kennedy would like to see. If doctors can at times be autocratic or paternalistic patients can all too often refuse to accept responsibility and insist in effect on the doctor making the choice for them. Will such patients prefer to pass the decision to some local committee set up by the State and composed of individuals representative of or delegated by some political or industrial body with doubtless firm views on those very facets of medical practice which present the individual doctor with difficult ethical decisions. Would such bodies give as much attention to the individual patient as does the doctor that the patient has chosen?

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