EDITOR, - Julie Dawson makes many valid points in her letter on whether the medical profession has the right to decide whether smokers should be entitled to vascular surgery,1 but she overlooks two issues. She asks how much longer society is prepared to let members of the medical profession take it on themselves to decide who gets treatment. Doctors have always had to carry out this duty because society has never put forward any group better educated or qualified to do so. I find it difficult to believe that there is another body of people who are so qualified, but this should certainly not be a political issue. What is clear is that society in general and the medical profession in …