Armed forces duty opposed by young doctors
Many young doctors and medical students agree they would rather be drafted into slums than into the armed forces, a UPI survey has indicated.
Dr. Roger O. Egeberg, soon to become the nation's top health officer, proposes to do just that with some doctors, many of whom are required to go into the armed services after spending 10 or 12 years in school.
"I think most of us would rather work in a ghetto than in the Army." said John Frey, 26, a senior at Northwestern University Medical School. "Not because we don't want to go into the Army—which is a relatively easy service—but because we want to do something more."
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Army bases he said, are usually overstaffed.
After Egeberg announced his proposal before a Senate Labor Committee this week, the University of Chicago posted a questionnaire to poll its students. It was no contest. Egeberg's plan was favored 30-0.
"I want to go where the people need me, said Lloyd Dodd, 21, of Las Vegas, a freshman at Baylor Medical School, and Cary Young, 23, a junior at Baylor from Redland, Calif., said. "I concur completely."
"I offered a choice between working with the poverty program and serving in the armed forces, I would work with the poverty program," he said.
Under Egeberg's plan, some of the new physicians, chosen by lottery, would donate their
services for one year to city slums, Indian reservations or other places where doctors are urgently needed instead of serving in the armed forces.
"I see this as a step forward in helping our national health," said Richard Wulfsberg, a fourth year medical student at the University of Southern California. "The only reservation I would be is that it might not provide the teaching aids that a large military hospital might."
Egeberg, a former dean of USC's medical school, said he felt that the average young doctor would rather practice in a wealthy suburb than a ghetto.
"The question is, how are you going to get doctors to go where you need them," he said. "You may have to make them."
A 22-year-old student from Birmingham, Ala., agreed. "There should and must be legislation
before the doctors will go where they are needed," he said.
"I personally plan to enter that type of practice after I get out of medical school anyway," Ed Connelly, 28, of Boston, a student at Temple Medical School in Philadelphia, said. "It certainly would be receptive to me as an alternative to the military service."
"I feel the draft should be abolished altogether, but since that probably won't happen, I'd much rather be drafted into medical work than into the military." David Wren, 26, a student at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco, said. "Good medical care is something that's urgently needed in minority areas."
There was one other dissenting voice in a survey of medical students from coast to coast on Ege-
berg's proposal. Linda Artlip, 21,
a senior at the University of Iowa
does not want to see the young
doctors drafted in to the slums or
anywhere else.
"I think it might do more good to send out some of the old, fat doctors and let them help a little," she said.
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