Madam, - The hauteur of Prof Ivan Perry's criticism of Maurice Neligan (March 27th) demonstrates the very points which Mr Neligan latter is trying to make: that epidemiologists may take themselves too seriously and in this process alienate the population they are trying to benefit; and that over-trammelled prohibitions of people's pleasures and vices are likely to fall on deaf ears, as the Church found out.
Fortunately, we are entering an enlightened era with regard to the application of statistical data to preventive medicine and are now grown-up enough to admit that even cancer screening has serious side-effects. The literature has coined the term "pseudo cancer" to describe the probably significant numbers of people who are diagnosed and treated for pathological entities which would not have caused them either morbidity or mortality if left untreated.
We must be on our guard lest our preaching of undiluted statistical data makes more people wretched than they need be, and appreciate that a life full of sloth, cigarettes, alcohol, lust and other vices may be more productive than a prolonged, hypochondriacal, miserable existence.
D.G. Rossetti (1828-82) put it rather better than I can when he wrote:
My doctor's issued his decree
That too much wine
is killing me,
And furthermore his ban
he hurls
Against my touching
naked girls.
How then? Must I no
longer share
Good wine or beauties,
dark and fair?
Doctor, goodbye, my sail's
unfurled,
I'm off to try the other world.
- Yours, etc,
J.B. O'CONNOR FRCS,
Waterford Regional Hospital,
Dunmore Road,
Waterford.