THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM The Shock of Little Rock Dear Sirs: Four of the seven Negro young people seeking re-admission to Central High School in Little Rock this September spent the summer here at our...
...Department of Internal Medicine The Monroe Clinic Monroe, Wis...
...To date I have not seen this refuted anywhere...
...I could use many adjectives to describe these young people—intelligent, alert, attractive, fun-loving, resilient—but above all else, they are normal and healthy, the kind of youngsters a parent appreciates as friends for his own children...
...After reading your issue for September 1958, I can only assume that your articles on economics and political science are as poorly prepared, poorly edited, subjective, and dishonestly written, as were those on "American Medicine Today...
...During the time I lived there the question was never raised...
...Kindschi seems to imply, or are the consumers of medical care also entitled to a say in the matter...
...I have served it as teacher, lawyer, judge, school administrator, etc., over a period of more than 50 years, and I venture to say without fear of successful contradiction that psychologically the people of this county are as far away from acceptance of compulsory integration as the folks at Little Rock...
...I live here in a northern Indiana industrial and everlastingly Republican community...
...I know you will keep us posted on other developments in this critical field...
...I was especially struck with Selig Greenberg's presentation, in which the North Carolina study is described...
...And one after another of our staff reported that same reaction of incredulity after getting to know the Little Rock young people: Are these the problem...
...Can he possibly be ignorant of the fact that this was merely the first survey in a comprehensive study...
...Constitution before he can qualify in my book as a competent member of our honored profession...
...Lloyd R. Evans, MX...
...Seham, Yes...
...Are these kids what all the fuss is about...
...Ann Hubbeix Ypsilanti, Mich...
...Indignant, Ashamed, Scared Dear Sirs: On July 21, 1958 the following appeared: "It has just leaked out that the real decision to send American troops to Lebanon, and British troops into Jordan, was made during a transatlantic call between President Eisenhower and Prime Minister MacMillan on the morning of July 14...
...The 22 Congressional leaders were later called in for advice but the decision had already been made...
...Selig Greenberg Providence, R. I. More on Greenberg Dear Sirs: I was pleased with the two articles on "American Medicine Today" in the September issue of The Progressive...
...And I'm scared as helll I'm indignant at the thought that apparently we do not have a single law to protect 170,000,000 people against the whims or wiles of one or two willful men...
...All of us who got to know these youngsters experienced an increasing sense of bafflement in trying to relate them to the newspaper stories of mobs, violence, conflict, and the rest...
...I suppose all this goes into making a best seller, but I'd like a higher grade of reporting...
...not one had the intestinal fortitude to make a single protest of the dire consequences that this decision might in-gender, but...
...Seham has hit the bull's eye in pointing out the fact that comprehensive medical care is a major goal of the irresistible social and economic ground swells of our time...
...Yet the article by Leonard Kenworthy on "Leaders of the New Africa" does precisely this with its description of high foreheads and strong chins...
...Time and leisure are not only needed for work like this...
...And is it "vicious" for a layman to raise the crucial question of the quality of the medical care some of us get...
...Perhaps this presentation will help to get us back in focus and provide us with a real incentive to make our present voluntary plans the models upon which future comprehensive plans can be built...
...Apparently we do not admit that China has any just claim to them as essential to her defense— though to anyone who regards the situation objectively they would seem to be much more important to her...
...Greenberg Replies Dear Sirs: I appreciate Dr...
...Frederick Lyons Berkeley, Calif...
...Greenberg, No Dear Sirs: I would like to offer a comment or two on the articles by Dr...
...Having done our best to make China an outlaw—by refusing her recognition, and preventing her admission to the United Nations—we condemn her in the eyes of the world for using force to secure what she conceives to be her own interests...
...they are themselves the essence of it...
...Kindschi's concern for the good name of the medical profession, but I wish that he had read my article a little more carefully...
...Time for Teachers Dear Sirs: Dorothy DeZouche's article, "Let Teachers Teach," in the September Progressive, is the most important one I have seen on the current problem of education...
...it requires the recognition, the response and the encouragement of a person committed to it as the highest value...
...That, as I see it, must soon become the recognized goal of organized medicine...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM The Shock of Little Rock Dear Sirs: Four of the seven Negro young people seeking re-admission to Central High School in Little Rock this September spent the summer here at our New York City Mission Society camps...
...The essence of the law is found in its sanction...
...But much less am I condoning the vicious type of lay medical writing that includes the entire medical profession in a McCarthy type of guilt by association complex...
...I expect the facts of all your fee-for-service writers are as poorly edited as were those of these articles...
...Kenworthy...
...I'm ashamed...
...it was always taken for granted that geographically they belonged to the mainland, and politically were under the control of whatever government ruled there...
...Is medicine the exclusive preserve of doctors, as Dr...
...And this perhaps over a barrel of oil...
...Leslie G. Kindschi, M.D., FACP...
...I am in no sense condoning low standards of medical care anywhere in this country— even in North Carolina...
...Max Seham and Selig Greenberg in the September issue of The Progressive...
...It is in effect based on a quote out of context that gives a totally inadequate and biased viewpoint of medical practice in this country...
...Had he done so, he would have noted my qualifying statements that "nobody really knows" how good the level of professional work done by some physicians is and that, in the absence of adequate machinery for controlling the quality of medical care and even of generally accepted standards for measuring such quality, "the proportion of good and poor work now being done by physicians must largely remain a matter of conjecture...
...It is a lot more important to tell how Nkrumah handles his political opposition than to note that he is "tall, slender, and good looking...
...It is time that this study receives the light of day...
...This is because it seems to strike squarely at the root of the problem, which is not at all physical or economic, but psychological, or better yet, spiritual...
...The plea has been made before, but I would plead again for everyone who writes or talks or thinks or acts on this issue of school desegregation to remember that these are not just issues, but human beings with whom we are dealing here: young souls, each as individual in his needs, and as important in God's eyes as your children and mine...
...Carl O. Thoren Pasadena, Calif...
...Surely the United States is not going to risk open war in support of Chiang's highly undemocratic government, which could hardly win a fair plebiscite among the Taiwanese themselves...
...I'm scared as hell to think that one or two men, be they either able and strong, weak and senile, avaricious, dictatorial, or partisan are in a position to blow up, not only our own people, but the whole world as well...
...Much of the medical care Americans get is unquestionably of high quality...
...I'm ashamed of the 22 Congressmen elected by and for the protection and aid of their constituents...
...He does not know the meaning of law or the distinction between the actual law of the land and court decisions...
...Ira C. Tilton Valparaiso, Ind...
...Thomas, Virgin Islands The Court Is Not the Law Dear Sirs: I have just read the article by John Lofton in the September issue of The Progressive, designating David Lawrence as the South's "Lawyer...
...It is claimed the offshore islands are essential to the defense of Formosa, and that Formosa is important to our own defense and that of the whole free world...
...John Lofton may be a lawyer, but as another lawyer, several years his senior, I would ask him to read and study the U.S...
...The preoccupation of the teacher with a multitude of duties, as this article makes clear, is the direct expression of the fact that the most difficult, demanding, and necessary of all educational jobs, the relationship between persons, is being evaded...
...Certainly the American people should put their minds to work and cease to accept administration policy and Congressional abdication of policy with the inertness that they have displayed recently...
...The Eisenhower-MacMillan agreement was kept completely secret except for the British Cabinet and our Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington...
...But we do not concede to her the rights we readily enough, and sometimes very quickly, concede to other governments, such as that of Iraq, and which we demand for ourselves...
...Kenworthy's Reporting Dear Sirs: One reason that I subscribe to The Progressive is that your writers do not select details of physical appearance or dress or present so-called personality traits in lieu of a referential account of a situation...
...What's the difference what Mohammed V was wearing when he saw Mr...
...I'm scared...
...After the many hundreds of thousands of words written and spoken about the abstract principles, the underlying social and political dynamics of the Little Rock situation, it comes as almost a physical shock to be confronted with the real human beings who stand at the center of this controversy, and to remember that it is their right to the best education and development that is at stake here, even more fundamentally, I believe, than the issues of intra-governmental powers—for in this country the government exists to serve them, not vice-versa...
...As a former resident of Amoy I am familiar with the location of the islands, in the outer harbor of that important port, and have passed close to them many times...
...Laramie, Wyo...
...It is this kind of special service that distinguishes The Progressive from all other publications...
...Chicago, 111...
...As a matter of fact we never spoke of "Free China" as distinct from the rest of China, till Chiang had been defeated, had fled the mainland, and had established a government of his own on the island of Formosa one hundred miles distant...
...That Dr...
...There are numerous so-called laws that lack the essence and while social order should be preserved, court decrees and laws that lack the essence and are irrational or foolish should be repealed, as the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act were, as soon as possible...
...instead bowed to the outrage in acquiescent, weak-kneed servility...
...Perhaps the most promising proposal put forward is that to neutralize Formosa under international auspices and leave the off-shore islands to Red China in exchange for their renunciation of violence against Formosa...
...It would have made more sense if he had stated he was selected by the French to rule than making the erroneous statement that the British picked him...
...The present Formosan situation is a case in point...
...These are ways in which the reader is given an emotionally toned stereotype through which the author's own prejudices are accepted as the very essence of reality...
...Organized medicine seems to have consistently underestimated the strength of these movements and to have overestimated its own capacity to cope with them...
...H. S. Mackenzie Chicago, 111...
...David W. Barry Executive Director New York City Mission Society Neutralize Formosa Dear Sirs: One cannot decide whether to be most alarmed at people's apathetic attitude towards the vital issues of our foreign policy or at the Administration's inept handling of repeated world crises...
...As I listened to him presenting his case, I was surprised to hear him say, "These islands have always been part of free China —never under Communist control...
...Is it really "a McCarthy type of guilt by association complex" to report the findings of a study of the quality of medical care under auspices of the most unimpeachable standing...
...We are, of course, enduring some rather violent growing pains as we grope our way along in a relatively uncharted field...
...It seems to have been forgotten what exactly is at stake in teaching, as in any human relationship centered on the growth of the personality...
...This is the government and the land which to the President is "Free China...
...To the best of my knowledge, the results of similar studies by the Rockefeller Foundation in other states are yet to be made public, and I sincerely hope that they will present a somewhat more encouraging picture than that brought to light in North Carolina...
...However, I am not so much concerned about the right or wrong of integration as I am for the preservation of our form of government...
...At its best, medicine in the United States is unsurpassed...
...I am considerably less impressed by the article by Selig Greenberg...
...What is at stake—wholeness and maturity —is not something that can happen by itself...
...In the meantime, it is the feeling of several distinguished medical authorities with whom I have discussed the matter that the situation found in North Carolina can hardly be regarded as an isolated phenomenon...
...His opinions are based on the Rockefeller Foundation study of medical practice in North Carolina, inferring that this sampling is typical of the rest of the United States...
...I feel that Dr...
...Mainland and Quemoy Dear Sirs: Speaking to the nation recently concerning the Far Eastern crisis our President expressed his readiness to go to war with Communist China over the ownership of the offshore islands...
...If the above be true, I'm indignant...
...Cancel my subscription to The Progressive now...
...Osier Peterson, who is in charge of this survey, has extended his project into other areas of the country, areas such as Wisconsin, where the standards of medical practice are generally high...
...Free China" did not then exist as a separate government...
...If we the people permit the judges of our Supreme Court to be a "third legislative chamber" in violation of the basic law of the land separating the powers and functions of the executive, legislative, and judicial, then our government immediately becomes a despotic or totalitarian institution under which neither the individual nor the state has any rights or any protection from the tyranny of arbitrary or foolish dictations and compulsions by elected or appointed officials...
...David L. Hart Gladwyne, Pa...
...Congratulations to Selig Greenberg and The Progressive for blowing the dust off that significant Rockefeller report on the adequacy of medical competence in North Carolina...
...Vernon R. DeYoung, MD...
...Edwin A. Weinstein, M.D...
...But competent opinion is that the quality of a good deal of our medical care leaves much to be desired and that this is inextricably tied up with the economics of medical practice...
...But if from this experience we can develop a comprehensive plan that retains at least some of the traditional personal side of American medicine, and still make really modern medical care available to all, then we will have accomplished what no other country has been able to do...
Vol. 22 • November 1958 • No. 11
