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LETTERS TO THE very neatly printed)
EDITOR MUST AND DOUBLE
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welcomes comments and-opinion pieces from our readers; The Forum page is designed to provide an opportunity to present views on various issues. Opinions expressed in letters; columns, or other articles on this page represent those of their authors and not imprint. Letters MUST be typed, double-spaced, and signed with name and telephone number, and submitted to CC 140 by 6:00 p.m. Monday of the week of publication. Maximum length of letters: 200 words. Anyone wishing to write l.onger opinion pieces should contact the Editor-in-Chief. All material is subject to editing.
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IRRELEVAN.T? To the Editor: On June 13 several members of Imprint staff published a short discourse on the issue of extrabilling. In the spirit of fairness, the reader is urgedto look back tothat stack of dusty Imprints in the corner, and objectively peruse the article entitled ‘What’s up Dot?“. It is not my intention to present an opinion or argument about the extra billing issue. Rather, I contend that ‘What’s up Dot?’ contains irrelevant and unrelated reasoning, is an unfounded comOment, and-is a fallacious argument. The following premises are presented in support of my claim. (I have described the fallacies found in ‘What’s up Dot?’ using their proper names in uppercase letters so the reader could easily identify them and confirm their usage in some text on critical thinking.) a Acknowledgement is given to the fact that this is an attempt at an argument as it contains a claim. The claim is that the income. of physicians is the real issue, and that they are striking for the right to charge for services rendered to clients. This claim, unsupported by premise, is left twisting in the winds of reason. The assertion was neither in recognition nor was it representative of the true issues. Both parties have stated their claims publicly, and yearly income was in neither platform. You are thus charged with the misrepresentation of an adversary’s position, that is, the STRAW MAN fallacy. The result of this initial flaw is the following group of fallacies. The fact that doctors make more than average income is an IRRELEVANT REASON. Bold printing the letters ASS in the name Ontario Medical ASSOciation is a textbook example of AD HOMINEM. Name calling bears no weight in adult conversation and casts doubt on the user. ’ There is also an attempt to make the profession appear GUILTY BY its ASSOCIATION to wealth when wealth is neither \a crime nor immoral. Several LOADED TERMS intended to promote an emotional reaction, rather than to appeal toreason, are used throughout. Gut feelings do not form the basis for infallible arguments. Then, there is the paragraph which deals with the “right to have” three automobiles; Rolls Royces to be exact. Everyone has the right to have three automobiles. Though personal financial conditions may prohibit many 4 from this luxury, we all still have the right to have as many cars as we wish. There is nothing in the Canadian Constitution or itsdawbooks to limit free individuals to own cars. This is a sneaky attempt to STEREOTYPE, and a HASTY CONCLUSlON is drawn from this IRRELEVANT assertion. No proof of this statement is offered, for one would be hard put to provide evidence that it was standard for members of a given profession to own three cars, let alone three Rolls Royces. UNSUBSTANTIATED statements like these hold no water for the objective reader.. You bring up the point that’ medical students “are educated at taxpayers’ (read yours and mine) expense”, as though they were a privileged class. Are you and I not also benefiting from the same tax subsidized education system? The comment that doc-
tors have an income in multiples of ours makes the DUBIOUS ASSUMPTION that our (read yours and mine) ability to earn equal or greater remuneration is somehow limited by the fact that we are not physicians. This is very twisted logic. There exist other professional avenues with immense economic potential (like being a dentist, lawyer, hockey player, or journalist for that matter). All these points show your argument to be fallacious. Your contention is clouded in irrelevance.’ Now, I would like to express my opinion about this article and its manner of presentation. You bear the titles common to the journalistic profession, and attempt to carry out its function. Yet, this article is a sad attempt to fit in those shoes. The audience would expect the efforts of no less than six so called journalists to produce something more coherent. It also appears to be very narrow minded and as it proves nothing, it is exactly that - nothing, a vacuum.’ The qualified journalist draws the reader’s attention with a catalogue of sound reasoning, not cheap shots and harsh feelings. Did you think that you could flaunt your prejudice with journalistic impunity? Or was this an attempt to obtain rebuttals for filler space in the Imprint? Can we now entrust you to report newsworthy events and issues without biased ink? I suspect not. ’ Freedom of opinion is a function of democracy and vice versa. However, some degree of responsibility is required before you express your feelings to the public ear. Remember, you do not own this newspaper, you merely operate it. You have beenspared the financial responsibility that a privately owned tabloid would ac-quire when trying to alter common beliefs. It is analagous to
_ Let’s
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putting a young child in a room with a box of crayons. The marring of the white walls will be inevitable, as the child has no concept of the repair work and financial consequence of such creativity. If swaying public opinion is your vocation, then do not presume your audience is completely incapable of critical analysis. You cannot unjustifiably discredit and misrepresent others. You have only succeeded in jeopardizing your journalistic integrity. This form of irresponsible action from journalists is unacceptable to both your peers and your readers. . Now, I ask you to redress. Compose an article about. the issue which has a clear and identifiable claim. Support it with sound reasoning, Prove to your audience that you are concerned, yet conscientious. Above all, aet respon-
sibly and maturely towards your readers, and don’t ascribe to pro-
fessional malpractice. Ray Roberts Math,
Bus. Admin.
Dots deserve dough To the editor: This letter is in response to Imprint’s vile article entitled What’s up Dot? The shabby arguments presented in the- article clearly show that the authors are uninformed and jealous. A typical news report informs us that Doctor So-And-So earns ‘$130,000 a year. Should wedoas the Imprint does and gasp, shake our heads and marvel at doctor’s avarice? Let’s look at it from the doctor’s point of view first. The $130,000 is his or her gross revenue. Typically 40-50 per cent of it goes towards office expenses (medical equipment, of- ’ fice rental and nursing and secretarial help) - this fact, which is usually omitted, starts to put things into perspective. Since doctors do not receive company benefits, they must save for their own retirement and pay their own
about:
There’s a joke current on Jarvis St. in Toronto which says that all the members of Metro’s gay community came originally from Waterloo and Ottawa. I was told it, and that it is a joke, by a guy who lives on Jarvis and is gay. So what’s the joke? I guess it’s that the Bible-belters and the bureaucrats, or their children anyway, come out of the closet in droves once they hit the big city. My inform-ant didn’t say that. In fact, he denied that being homosexual had anything to do with one.‘s upbringing. It was less ” a choice of behaviour and alternative life style” (my terms) than “a sexual orientation established by age two” (his terms). We agreed to disagree and to discuss it further, me citing Foucault’s History of Sexuality, vol. I, to him, he citing his own and his friends’ experience to me. But homosexuality,. its origin and nature, wasn’t what our meeting was about. It was about the fact that, at age 36, he was first of his circle (and of the Jarvis St. gay community) to contract AIDS; that, with less than a year to live, he was scared. I had known Gary 20 years ago, in my first church. He was a shy, gangling teenager; I was a zealous young student minister. His parents were deeply involved in the little portable church I lived in and preached at near Newmarket (while commuting weekdays to seminary in Toronto), and Gary, for the first and only time in his life, was “affected” by religion. Then our paths diverged. I was ordained and sent off to Great Whale River, then the Queen Charlottes, then Bella-Bella, Yellowknife, New Orleans . . . Gary left the bleak little subdivision, entered the filmindustry and the fast life, came out of the closet and eventually settled, via Morocco (the haunt of Paul Bowles and William Burroughs) on Jarvis St. in Toronto. The stage was set for our meeting again. The catalyst was AIDS. AIDS, as I’m learning from Gary, is a disease whose victims pose a threat to no one, but who are themselves vulnerable to everyone. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is, as its name implies, a condition characterized by a collapse of the body’s natural immunity against disease. Your resistance to any viral disease, e.g. pneumonia, is low and gets lower the longer you have AIDS. (It’s usually a particular type of pneumonia that finishes off the AIDS victim.)
dental and drug expenses. Malcapped for life, (I doubt the aupractice insurance is a further exthors of that foul article are pense. Their before-tax income is willing or able to take on such renow about $55,000 - $70,000. sponsibility.) So doctors have a comfortable but I work at my office during the not extravagant lifestyle. day, Monday to Friday and don’t When I graduate, next April, I have to worry about the job afterexpect to start around $30,000 wards. By contrast, when a docand climb to around $50,000 (in tor’s patient is sick or involved in real terms) as I gain more expe- j an accident, he or she is called in rience. Why is a doctor worth whether it is Christmas day, 4 more than I am? a.m.-or just a relaxing evening. First of all, doctors have seven In short, doctors deserve the sato 11 years of intense training: laries they receive. two years of pre-meds, four years If the authors of that article had of meds, one year of interning and their way, we would pay our docan optional four years‘for specialitors what we pay our plumbers zation. (Note: Their education is and bright young men and women subsidized just as engineering, would not be enticed into practiclaw, MBA’s and other university ing medicine. The simple fact is programmes are.) that the quality of care would drop Doctors’ responsibilities are significantly. I shudder to think of much greater than mine. If I make the quackery that would be prea mistake, I may lose money. If a valent if we decided to underpay doctor makes a mistake, a patient our doctors for 20 or 30 years. could die or be physically handiJames WoQdger 4A CS
AIDS
bytheRkvYDr.TomYork
It was while he was desperately ill with pneumonia, before he was diagnosed as having AIDS, that Gary came to the despairing conclusion that “something was missing,” and that he must look me up. His friends, of whom he has many and whose network reaches to - Waterloo (and, no doubt, Ottawa), tracked me down and now Gary and I are in touch again. He’s changed, I’ve changed, but after an hour together it was the same as old times - except that time is short and the end is in sight. What do you say to a man dying of AIDS? Neither of us knew, but I was pretty sure it was the same as what you’d say to dying man, period. After all, the Christian should speak as a dying man to a dying ‘men., So I did, we did. Everything second-rate and smug and complacent was purged from our conversation and we made plans to meet again, to be friends for as long asit lasts, for our mutual benefit. It was almost as though the shade of old Walt Whitman were present-that archetypal homosexual poet--presiding over this colloquy between dying men, naked minds. Lusty old bearded Walt Whitman thundering: Cameradd, I give you my hand! I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or 1a.w; Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel L with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live? But there was also a darker side to it which had nothing to do with either homosexuality or with AIDS, but with death: a man in the prime of his life knowing that he must die within a year. What would you do? Why, carry on with life, of coursewhich is what Gary is doing: II There’s a scene at the end of Joyce Cary’s novel, The Horse’s Mouth, in which Gully Jimpson, a loveable old painter who has fallen off a ladder, lies dying in a Catholic hospital. The Sister tending him overhears him laughing to himself and says, “Mr., Jimpson, don’t you think that, at a time like this, you should laugh a little less and pray a little more?” To which Gully Jimpson interrupts his laughter to say, “It’s the same thing, Madam,” and flips out. (The Rev. Dr. Tom York is United Church Chaplain to UW and WLU. His office is at St. Paul’s CoI!ege.) ,
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