‘Discarding doctors’ column fails to recognize hardships of medical practice

While many can identify with the pains Chris Ward describes in his column “”Discarding doctors to save ourselves,”” (Oct. 14) his overall argument against doctors is incredibly unfair. 

Sure, the health care system is by no means perfect, and it does need reform. However, Ward’s statement that “”people pursue these jobs for the paycheck without thinking that the foundation of these jobs is helping people”” is unwarranted and ignorant.

To begin with, even getting into medical school is a very selective process. To be accepted, an applicant must not only have outstanding academic scores, they must also have a great deal of outside work. A student has to show that they truly care about helping people through the many hours they have volunteered, the clinical experience and the scientific research they need to have in order to be a valid candidate to be accepted. 

A typical medical school accepts less than 20 percent of applicants, so in order to be accepted, a student will have had to have made a strong demonstration to the admissions panel that they truly care about being a doctor for the right reasons. 

Once admitted, a medical student must go through four more rigorous years of coursework. A typical medical school course-load is equivalent to taking 30-40 credit hours in one semester as an undergrad. After graduating from medical school, a doctor must then go through residence, where they are sometimes working 80 hours per week. This can last over five years. This means that, for some doctors, the total amount of post-high school education they received exceeds 15 years. After those 15 years the doctor can begin to chip away at his medical school debts, which can approach $200,000. 

In addition to this, a typical doctor works well over 40 hours a week. After considering this grueling process, I find it very hard to believe that anyone can honestly say that doctors pursue the job solely for the paycheck.

James Isaacs

Nutrition sophomore

Bah, humbug to Brendon Specktor’s review of Bob Dylan’s Christmas CD

First of all, I have to say I have not heard the CD. However, Mr. Specktor’s comments make it perfectly obvious from the get-go that he is no Dylan fan.

The worst part of this review is the paragraph stating that Dylan did this CD because he’s old and lazy! Read the article below and you can see that all the royalties, both here in the states and internationally, will go toward feeding the hungry. Old and lazy, no — putting his money where his mouth has always been — SOCIAL ACTIVISM, yes!

Bah, humbug to you, Mr. Scrooge/Specktor!

Peg Peterson