Madam, - Having parted company with your recent contributor, the strident Mark Steyn, all is not lost as you have found a worthy replacement in Mr Maurice Neligan (Health Supplement). His most recent article (March 21st) is a prime example of what many "lay" people feel is wrong in the medical profession. It is intemperate, insulting and arrogant. He bemoans the fact that "doctors were to be circumscribed, evaluated and monitored as never before."
It is precisely because of the failure of the self-regulating medical profession to monitor adequately and deal with incompetence and inappropriate behaviour among doctors that external monitoring is being proposed.
He further states that "they were to be regulated in a way that applied to no other profession."
The aviation industry disproves this, with airline pilots monitored, evaluated and tested for competence and medical fitness approximately five times a year, every year of their careers. This is not a bad thing!
Finally he denigrates whistleblowers. Indeed he stoops to referring to them as "informers" with a none too-subtle association with recent criminal and paramilitary history.
Whistleblowing has had a positive influence in correcting serious malfeasance over a long period.
Examples include the "Pentagon Papers" episode which disclosed what the Nixon administration was up to and the leaking of information to the journalist Seymour Hersch which exposed the goings-on in Abu Ghraib prison.
It is now time for accountability, Mr Neligan, not bluster. - Yours, etc,
DERMOT MORAN, St Fintan's Park, Sutton, Dublin 13.