'NO ONE COULD have felt at all happy,' the British
Medical Journal says, at seeing the names of the President and six members of the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons advertised in the Spectator in connection with a television pro- gramme. I could; and did. I am increasingly irritated by the profession's morbid terror of allowing its members any personal publicity: that doctors should be compelled to remain anonymous if they appear on television is a silly and out- moded convention. And this stricture applies. to lawyers, too. With civil servants, admittedly, the problem is more difficult; but I can see no reason why a man who has risen to eminence in one of the professions, or who has some special quali- fications—not necessarily medical : he may simply be an excellent expounder of other people's ideas—should not be allowed to appear in a programme in his own right. If he abuses his position he can be dealt with in the normal way by the General Medical Council.
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