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. 2001 Jul 14;323(7304):108.

Warning to GMC

Patients should come first

Roger M Goss 1
PMCID: PMC1120718  PMID: 11480409

Editor—How interesting that Heath overlooks the General Medical Council's primary responsibility—protecting patients.1 Everything else flows from this duty. To relate empowering patients to political abuse and coercion seems disingenuous. Why elevate to top priority protecting doctors' freedom to conduct their practice however they see fit? It suggests a desire to thwart the government's goal of putting patients, their views, and their interests at the heart of the NHS.

Most doctors also come from a relatively narrow, affluent, and well educated section of society. Lay people contributing to medical bodies need comparable educational attributes to hold their own in debate with health professionals. This inevitably limits eligibility. That's life. Moreover, doctors who polled the most votes at a recent GMC by-election included one once struck off for her attitude to patients and colleagues and another fined for carrying out surgery without consent. This hardly makes the argument for election as preferable to appointment.

We can explore the feasibility of the patient movement and the voluntary sector electing non-professionals (a better expression than lay people, with its flavour of second class citizens) to the GMC. Community health councils have provided a precedent for such a system.

References

  • 1.Heath I. A warning to the GMC. BMJ. 2001;322:433. . (17 February.) [Google Scholar]
BMJ. 2001 Jul 14;323(7304):108.

Doctors are part of an economic hegemony

Jim Hardy 1

Editor—Heath is quite right to underline the long and dishonourable history of the political subversion of medicine.1-1 She seems to assume, however, that current medical practice is untainted by malign forces. As doctors we are certainly control agents, representatives if you like of our political masters and an increasing hegemony that dictates the manner in which we practise as doctors.

For proof she need look no further than the BMJ, to which she has been an editorial adviser and frequent contributor. Before the first editorial in the issue of 17 February, there are six full page adverts for new drugs (celecoxib, linezolid, rosiglitazone, tirofiban, and risedronate in this order). We are asked to believe in the editorial integrity of this magazine, yet, to date, only rosiglitazone has respectability. Who controls the BMJ's advertising policy? We need an open debate on the independence of all our representative bodies, not just the General Medical Council.

References

  • 1-1.Heath I. A warning to the GMC. BMJ. 2001;322:433. . (17 February.) [Google Scholar]

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