LETTERS

...was not so kind to the book...

...However, there are two points on which I wish to differ...

...Some of the other activities professors fritter their time away with include competing for research dollars, conducting research, writing and publishing results, serving on committees, advising students, attending meetings, giving tutorials and independent studies, participating in professional organizations and activities, and public service activities...

...Kessler derived that number by comparing a year's premium intake with the same year's benefit outlay, but the comparison is meaningless because life insurance typically pays off many years after the initial purchase (and don't we all prefer it that way...

...I also find it difficult to believe that the National Education Association's top officers aren't in control...

...So the question is not whether organic chemistry is useful, but whether the organic course is relevant to the students' needs...

...JOHN BARSON, Ed.D...

...Perhaps this is an unconscious effort on the part of medical school admissions committees to maintain the status quo...

...As a modestly paid and overworked assistant professor, I resent your implication that professors who are not carrying heavy teaching loads are off loafing...

...Charlotte, North Carolina Your treatment of undergraduates' pathway to medical school, "The Premed Machine;' dramatizes adequately the rigors faced...

...Organic should not be taught to premeds and other non-majors as it is taught to budding chemists: the field is huge now, boasting more subspecialties than does medicine...

...This is a disservice to hundreds of college graduates who will be enrolling at the 15 state and privately supported osteopathic medical schools this fall...

...It is true that organic chemistry requires a certain amount of memorization...

...and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature...

...JACK E. FERGUSON Sacramento, California...

...W. A. WHITMAN Reston, Virginia Despite its self-proclaimed "liberal" credentials, The Washington Monthly offers an abundance of material entirely too thoughtful and worthwhile to be the product of true contemporary "liberals...

...RICHARD D. KENNEY, M.D...

...This is well documented in Paul Barrett's article on "The Premed Machine" and the reasons for high enrollments in organic chemistry...

...so does reading, at the beginning...

...He will be more than quasi-challenged to master the basic science knowledge and clinical skills needed to become a part of the nation's fastest growing health profession...

...We pick the best for staff work and we reward them...

...Treasury and their collective managers office right down the hall in the Social Security Administration...

...However, there may be some ice cold comfort in knowing that Darwin shared similar concerns when he spoke of the effect of science on his broader interests: "I have almost lost my taste for pictures or music...The loss of these tastes, this curious and lamentable loss of the highest aesthetic tastes, is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect...

...A friend of mine at the University of Illinois, an assistant professor, one time had an associate professor say to her after she had spent a long afternoon discussing career goals with students, "You will never get anywhere in your career if you waste so much time with the students ." This is the pervasive attitude and it works against putting in the time and energy and commitment to teaching activities...

...Secondly, one of the first things new professors today at research institutions learn is that career rewards do not come from excellence in teaching but rather from research and publications...

...In his description of how this happens, though, he missed what to me is a logical conclusion...

...He clearly describes the process which eliminates many capable individuals who choose not to prostitute themselves...

...Why this nation ever delegated control of its children to a vast public education bureaucracy is difficult to understand...

...Although I agree somewhat about problems with university administrations and the negative aspects of the tenure system, the reasons why classrooms might be empty are many...

...For many professors, the growing lack of interest in humanities and social sciences translates into shrinking enrollments...

...But your efforts help reveal the magnitude of our blunder...

...Neither of these points of disagreement counter the thrust of "The Premed Machine," but perhaps the following observation does: of the 180 students that I have taught in the past two years, most (more than 90 percent), are not only competent and strongly motivated students, they are kind and considerate people...

...Whether describing the self-serving behavior of the National Education Association or commending the intelligent analysis of Diane Ravitch ["A Lonely Crusade for Classroom Standards," Phillip Keisling, May], you do more in a few pages to educate the public than many of our alleged schools accomplish in a few years...

...degree, which is legally and practically equivalent to the M . D. In many states, D.O.'s and M. D’s take the same licensure examinations...

...It seems, like Darwin, we must individually get an education in spite of our education...

...The giant mutual life insurance companies are really answering to no one—policy holder, government, nor God...

...As this debate gains momentum, readers are certain to benefit from your open-minded examination of this important issue...

...ROGER MAGYAR Director, Education Policy Studies Sequoia Institute Sacramento, California With no less than two excellent articles on education in your May issue, I found it surprising that in "Tilting at Windmills" Charles Peters simplistically blames rising college costs on lazy and/or incompetent professors...

...The director of the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke is Murray Goldstein, D.O...

...They talk of free enterprise as if they invented it, yet in reality are socialist citadels...

...To do otherwise would make us superior technicians with an inexhaustible fund of knowledge but unhelpful to ourselves and others...

...This is not always explicitly stated but it is definitely there...

...How about an article by the NEA to hear their side of this story since it seems excluded from the article...

...Federal bureaucratic management could not be any worse than they probably have now...

...In those states where separate exams are given, the degrees remain legally equivalent...

...First, Mr...

...First, I think it's important to realize that teaching is only part of what most university professors do...

...Cuba, New Mexico Unfortunately, I cannot quarrel with most of the issues in "The Premed Machine...

...One of the unhappy consequences of our underdeveloped education for life is our inability to communicate feelingly with fellow physicians about any matter beyond medicine...

...Furthermore, any citizen with a basic course in organic and biochemistry is more competent to evaluate public issues such as acid rain, "yellow rain," leaded fuels, nutrition (including fad diets, "health" foods, and vitamins), drugs (licit and illicit), and toxic wastes...

...However, your author errs in characterizing osteopathic medicine as a "quasimedical" system...

...Osteopathic college entrant Epstein will not be disappointed in his next four years of study...

...Good living extends to all except the home office grunts who haven't been invited to the sales conventions...

...Public policy is beginning to consider education vouchers and tax credits as means to restore account ability and parental involvement...

...Those who choose to specialize often do residencies side-by-side with M. D's...

...They didn't get to be officers unless they have savvy...

...Joseph Belth, professor of insurance at Indiana University, says the book "Lacks documentation, and most of the writing is anecdotal ." What is even worse for readers is that the reviewer accepts and reprints Kessler's basic charge, which is seriously flawed, namely that the average life insurance customer "must pay $1 to get 14 cents' worth" of benefit...

...JUDITH LISANSKY New Brunswick, New Jersey Mournful MD's...

...Organic chemistry is at the heart of biochemistry, microbiology, pharmacology, and physiology—some of the basic sciences taught in all medical schools...

...But "organic," as it pertains to medicine and to daily life, is vitally important...

...President, American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine Rockville, Maryland Paul Barrett's article on "The Premed Machine" had the perspective of one who has been there...

...Their proper place is as a Department of Health and Human Services division, with their assets a part of the U.S...

...We have managed to cut ourselves from those who would know best what a toll our daily stresses take...

...Recent changes in admissions rules at Georgetown indicate that at least some admissions committees are big enough to admit change is due...

...Second, undergraduate organic chemistry courses may well reek of the sweat of premeds' brows and the sulfurious fumes of murderous competition...

...Nowhere is this clear headedness more evident than in your candid illumination of flaws in our government-controlled, unresponsive, insulated, wasteful public education system...

...Perhaps that explains why the reviewer found the book "powerful (and) well documented ." Another critic of the life insurance business (there are a few...

...But any good organic chemist, with the help of some medical school teachers of basic sciences, should be able to design a useful, and even exciting, course for non-majors, if college officials permit it...

...Why the Largest Teachers Union Puts Its Staff First and Education Second," Bill Boyton and John Lloyd, May.] I can tell you in the association where I belong I expect staff to give good advice...

...EDYE E. GROSECLOSE, Ph.D...

...WALTER BUSSEWITZ Manager, Media Information American Council of Life Insurance Washington, D. C . Re: Philip Stern's "What's Wrong With Life Insurance...

...angry DO's Paul Barrett's article, "The Premed Machine" [May], gave an unfortunately accurate picture of how we physicians continue to be educated...

...Persons who toe the line in the early premed years are less likely to question traditional wisdom later in their medical training...

...They give me hope for the profession of medicine...

...Epstein was doubtless admitted to a college of osteopathic medicine (no longer called a college of "osteopathy"), at which he will be taught some techniques of manipulative therapy, in addition to all of those subjects taught in other medical schools...

...Colleges of osteopathic medicine grant the D.O...

...Good physicians, like good readers, have just forgotten that they weren't born knowing the most fundamental aspects of their discipline...

...Education Secretary Bill Bennett has declared expanding parental choice to be one of his objectives...

...It seems to me that it's a trifle more complicated than that...

...QUIGLEY PETERSON, M.D...

...The catch, of course, is in the phrase, "as it pertains to...

...Many, if not most, of the students at colleges of osteopathic medicine are there because they prefer the philosophical emphasis on holistic medicine and primary patient care that those schools espouse...

...Assistant Professor Southeastern College of Osteopathic Medicine North Miami Beach, Florida Life Insurance: who profits In selecting a reviewer for Ron Kessler's book ["What's Wrong With Life Insurance," Philip M. Stern, May], the Monthly chose a former colleague of Kessler's at The Washington Post...