Please Santa, bring me freedom
BMJ 2004; 329 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.329.7480.0-g (Published 16 December 2004) Cite this as: BMJ 2004;329:0-g
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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
Competing interests: No competing interests
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
Competing interests: No competing interests