Sir, - The conclusion of your Medical Correspondent, Dr Muiris Houston (The Irish Times, January 22nd) regarding Dr Colman Muldoon's suspension, could scarcely be better, or more sombrely expressed: "The controversy signals the end of an older style of hospital care and its replacement by an environment in which doctors must work within a system of both clinical and administrative accountability."
He might have ended on a more optimistic note, however, if he had added: "Unless we all shout STOP!"
What is at stake here - and let there be no doubt about it - is who decides the medical treatment. Sean Citizen ultimately is given a qualified doctor or a faceless bureaucrat. In his novel 1984 George Orwell showed a world in which - to paraphrase Franklin D. Roosevelt - "bureaucracy reigns supreme". This is not the sort of world I wish to live in and I doubt that most other Irish people would wish to live in it either. Fortunately there is a way we can shout "Stop!". Everyone who has any connection with any official within the Department of Health, in local government or hospital management can buttonhole them and let them know how you feel.
Politicians of whatever level or party may safely be targeted. Then perhaps common sense will prevail and the patients of Dr Muldoon who, without any consultation whatever, have been deprived of the best services of the doctor of their choice, will see him reinstated as speedily as possible. - Yours, etc., Harry Smith,
Piperstown, Drogheda.