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EDITOR'S CHOICE: Kamran Abbasi Please Santa, bring me freedom BMJ 2004; 329: 0-g [Full text]

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Let's hear it for the shackles of the rich

Nancy O'Connor   (20 December 2004)

Christmas issue

Neil A Watson, MA, MD, FRCS   (1 January 2005)

Let's hear it for the shackles of the rich 20 December 2004
Nancy O'Connor, Medical Officer Pawhuska Indian Health Center Pawhuska OK 74056 Send response to journal: Re: Let's hear it for the shackles of the rich	Your editorial writer states that Americans "are slaves to work, crippled by personal debt, and trapped in loneliness or loveless relationships "the shackles of the rich." Yup. That's why my husband and his extended Filippino family has immigrated to the USA: because the "shackles of the rich" are available to anyone who wants to work hard. You see, the "shackles of the rich" look pretty good when compared to the shackles of the poor...and in the Philippines, my husband's opportunities in his small rural town were extremely limited...so he came to the US, sent back half his salary, which educated his extended family, and half of them ended up joining him here, and became proud Americans also... In America, an immigrant, or even the child of an Irish factory worker like myself can become a doctor, and not face ridicule and class barriers like one would in the UK.... As the song says: We're proud to be Okies from Muskogee...or in this case Pawhuska. Competing interests: I live in the USA and work for a federal clinic
Christmas issue 1 January 2005
Neil A Watson, MA, MD, FRCS, Artist, teacher and writer California 94801 Send response to journal: Re: Christmas issue	Dear Sir. The cover of the 2004 Christmas issue of the BMJ did not bode well for any appropriately seasonal content, especially when one read the caption saying that the image was of people 'wild with joy' at the onset of one of the most repressive regimes in recent times. You Sir are, of course, entitled to your own political opinions, but to open your 2004 Christmas issue editorial with 'George Bush's agenda is to bring democracy and freedom to the rest of the peoples of the world. while his own are slaves to work, crippled by personal debt, and trapped in loneliness or loveless relationships - the shackles of the rich' seems to me to be both an ignorant generalisation about the general state of life in the USA, and entirely irresponsible. You have stepped well oustide any reasonable guidelines that might, and should, form the boundaries of your office. But this is not an isolated incident. The past few months have seen a series of editorial blunders under your stewardship, all of them, seemingly, riddled with your own political agenda which has no place within the pages of what was once one of the most respected medical journals in the English speaking world. Nowhere in this issue could I find anything relating to what Christmas is actually about. Though there were one or two articles of interest, for the most part the issue lacked any sense of insight or humour, qualities of so many of its predecessors. I see the direction of the BMJ as being parallel to the parlous and pathetic state of what has been called in Britain 'State Art', now largely cut off from the rich heritage of the Fine Arts tradition. I hope that the new Editor will have the strength, and the vision, to return the BMJ to its rightful place on centre stage. But the omens are not looking good. Earlier this year I walked behind an elderly English couple in the Cotswold village of Burford. As they walked along, the wife said to her husband 'England's finished really isn't it?' Judged by its public art, and now by its leading medical journal, it seems that she was probably right. Sad. Very sad. Competing interests: None declared