Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Real Pills In the October 1991 American Spectator, Ben Stein describes a pathetic young lady with multiple sclerosis who led him to believe that he was taking her to a neurologist....
...First, you give us Tom Bethell on the causes of homosexuality...
...Stein recognized the quackery, it is discomforting to realize that people like the "nutritionist" are increasing the cost of health care, and the only providers being held responsible are medical physicians and hospitals...
...If Stein is looking for childish, innocent, and carefree women, and he wants to stay in California, he should try TAS's classifieds, under the "Personals" column...
...The next time you want to run down San Francisco, please get a San Franciscan to do the job...
...The real surprise is that it is the doctors who are taking over the death industry...
...Why is it wonderful...
...Of course, any woman who reaches middle age in such an environment is unbelievably tough-looking...
...Their sourdough bread is to die for...
...Instead Mr...
...as saying "the Americans always run," to talk of "ex-army types" denigrating the American army, is typical of the selective muck which is so often written in the name of media "freedom...
...She's also not likely to be offered as many jobs (genuine or not) in modeling, commercials, sitcoms, or TV movies...
...She is not likely to be hustled as much as a woman wearing little frilly skirts and a childish pullover T-shirt...
...It is difficult to control one's temper when the junior medical student is "Dr...
...Most medical schools tend to systematically discriminate, not as a matter of policy, but rather as a hangover from when the attending physicians were being educated...
...Unfortunately, if they have time to read the September issue, you are going to alienate many potential conservatives-in-the-making...
...A lot of time was wasted inflating that doll (not an accurate model of how the lungs really work), which could have been spent on better things, like how surfactant works and how lungs which are inappropriately treated on the ventilator tend to malfunction...
...I have spoken to British officers who were there and they are unstinting in their praise...
...Seavello will have learned as much as she would have if the lecturer had taught the subject in a more seemly manner...
...If his descriptions of West Coast life are accurate (his director said, "Most of us in this business are addicted to lying"), everyone, not just women, will be tough, mean, and vicious...
...May I suggest that readers who want some feel for the kind of world this foreshadows turn to what is, for conservatives, an unlikely authority—Gore Vidal...
...But let it be seen for what it is...
...If the spite of British academia's trash is reported by such as Reid, it has to be borne—how else could his kind eat...
...Kevorkian intend his readers should start with him...
...This last is a bit extreme, but on the whole the premise, which seemed incredible when I read the book in the late sixties, is now merely improbable...
...Roderick L. Miller Victor, New York Unsubstantiated Charges With regard to Mr...
...Benjamin J. Stein's article ("Comrades and Patients") in the October 1991 American Spectator, may I make some comments...
...Susan Reynolds, M.D...
...If regicide is killing the king, and suicide is killing the self, then medicide must be killing the doctor...
...Jens B. Andersen Plantation, Florida Was it conspiracy or coincidence that two of your regular contributors decided to dump on my fair city, San Francisco, in the October issue of TAS...
...With a 50-percent female student body, do you really presume that all the students have wives...
...Tadich's daily specials, which include pot roast, corned beef and cabbage, and calamari steak, are really quite good...
...J Keen Holland Lenhartsville, Pennsylvania Miller's Cross Judging by Alonzo L. Hamby's review of Frank Freidel's Franklin D. Roosevelt His Rendezvous With Destiny (TAS, October 1991), this is just another worshipful volume that fails to do justice to the looniest, scariest, most incompetent regime in U.S...
...As Mr...
...I never (continued on page 50) Coming Next Issue The AMERICAN SPECTATOR THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1991 7 CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 7) thought you were such an ardent supporter of committed lesbian relationships...
...Matthew Lefkowitz San Francisco, California Delicate Surgery I was disappointed to read your comments on the situation at Stanford Medical School in the September "Continuing Crisis...
...Stein must know that too, having eaten there...
...Stein pointed out, this young lady's fees were covered by her insurance—hence, by all her co-insurees...
...Who cares for facts if sleazy gossip can earn money for the second-rate hack...
...mortician John Cave, in which the conversion means signing up for suicide...
...Having been to the Tadich Grill more than several times over the past eight to ten years I know that they don't take credit cards...
...I can assure you that no physician or medical group could make the slightest move against parasites of this sort without litigation...
...To those British who were in the Second War, then under American command in Korea and in Europe facing Russia, it is the familiar call of the deliberately divisive media guttersnipe...
...On page 29, Mr...
...Surely Mr...
...Wythe Walberswick, Suffolk England Vidal Signs Thank you for Michael Fumento's excellent piece on the cult of death in the Netherlands ("The Dying Dutchman: Coming Soon to a Nursing Home Near You," TAS, October 1991...
...Regarding Dr...
...Next, we get the usually reliable Ben Stein attacking the truly wonderful Tadich's Grill...
...Jones," but the female senior resident is addressed by patients as "nurse," and by the attending physician as "honey" or "dear...
...The waiter may have lost Stein's credit card, but not because he was using it to pay the bill...
...I'm sure she will be competent, thorough, and correct in her treatment—but there are times that all of us women who happen to be physicians cannot help but smile a little...
...Louis, Missouri...
...Inflatable sex dolls are equally inappropriate—and have the unfortunate side effect of making learning respiratory physiology unattractive...
...history...
...Bloomington, Indiana Ben Stein seems to have become TAS's Whine Columnist...
...No one does it better...
...It wouldn't be so bad for the anatomy professors to show Playboy pinups if only they also used the Chippendale's calendar, but they don't...
...One goes north, not south, of Market to the Tenderloin for phO, fortified wine, and fallen women...
...Someone, somewhere, is probably doing just that...
...But the article was ruined for me in the first paragraph, in which Bethell put the Tenderloin south of Market Street, where it isn't...
...Likewise, the insurers appear to be helpless...
...Battered women, abused children, drug addicts, crime victims tend to inspire one with deep doubts about the impact of governmental programs and the infinite potential for human nature...
...Only the priests (morticians) are forbidden this ultimate rite of the cult...
...Vidal's novel Messiah (E...
...P. Dutton, 1954) describes a pseudo-religious cult founded by California (where else...
...I can pretty much assure you that not all the women at Stanford Medical School are named Julie, and I am certain that they refrain from stomping their feet in pique or acting cute whenthey are angry...
...Stein writes about Tadich's, also known as the Tadich Grill...
...The cult sweeps through what was once known as Christendom, but founders in its confrontation with Islam...
...Of course a woman in a neatly tailored business suit and high heels and stockings is well adjusted and without pathological hostility...
...I'm sure there are many Oriental ladies who would be impressed by a writer, lawyer, economist, and actor...
...In Indiana, one insurer attempted to limit the type of medical personnel to whom they would make payment...
...Not just for the fish, which is great, but because . . . they don't take credit cards...
...A touchy and provocative subject...
...Women physicians are a largely untapped resource for the right—who else spends as much time dealing with the results of the breakdown of civil society...
...As the sole avowed reader of TAS in the City, I take umbrage at your ill-tempered and ill-informed writers...
...She can probably outfight, outswear, and out-swindle Saddam Hussein without breaking a sweat, let alone a press-on nail...
...It seems almost all restaurants are overrated these days...
...Another hack, using the same phraseology and altering a few names, could write just as damaging a critique of British military competence...
...Switzer of Stanford...
...Virginia Maida Randall New York, New York Fixing a Hole Stuart Reid, in his article "The Gulf Across the Atlantic" (TAS, August 1991), happily digs to deepen the hole...
...Kevorkian's forthcoming book—Prescription: Medicide, I am somewhat confused by the title...
...The reason I bring up the prospect is that Stanford Medical School is one of the best in the world, and the students you now call callipygian are also among the future pool for Nobel Prizes...
...Stein found that the "health care provider" was a nutritionist who subsequently charged her $300 for a bag of what appeared to be over-the-counter vitamin pills...
...Alan B. Somers, MD...
...The legislature banned its efforts...
...Heaven help you if you ever have an annoying, embarrassing minor illness, for which the world authority on treatment is Dr...
...You would howl in outrage about a Harvard Law School professor who brandished vibrators and sex toys at her male students when discussing tort law and theories of assault...
...Does Dr...
...Until the definitive work on FDR is written, I shall have to content myself with John T. Flynn's The Roosevelt Myth—or the comic sections of Atlas Shrugged...
...Someone's life may depend on it someday, but I doubt that Dr...
...Only the laity will be able to rectify this situation if the public is truly concerned...
...To quote Pinter, Pilger, and Jonathan Clark as representative of British opinion, to mention a "distinguished Tory" (why no name...
...Although it is gratifying that Mr...
...Frankly, though, someday we should sit down and have a good chat about what it's like to be a physician who happens to be a woman...
...It is rather difficult to maintain one's self-esteem after being on call for eighty hours straight with only two or three hours sleep, and then publicly castigated for not wearing high heels with one's scrub suit...
...The British consider the American effort in the Gulf to have been of textbook quality...
...If Los Angeles is so terrible, and the women so screwy, as all his columns seem to indicate, why does he stay there...
Vol. 24 • December 1991 • No. 12
