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Opinion about Arizona medical students flawed

To the editor,

So Colin McCullough believes that this new proposal in front of the Arizona Board of Regents will set a "new" standard among medical and law students for philanthropic endeavors. As far as medical school is concerned, a sense of commitment to fellow man is already a standard; more so, it is a prime directive, a bare minimum.

Mr. McCullough, your view of medical school applicants running around with dollar signs dancing in their heads, badly in need of a good lesson by forcing them to get down and dirty with the less fortunate is totally ludicrous. Actually, there might be some dollar signs dancing around up there, but those figures reflect the enormous debt they face during medical school. We at the medical school in Arizona can consider ourselves very lucky in this area. In contrast, my unfortunate colleagues in private medical schools around the country will be getting something else with that doctorate: financial debt on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But then you might think that won't be a problem since they make an average starting salary of some $64,000. Here's a little dose of reality; that figure for a starting doctor, that is, a first year medical resident, is closer to $30,000. Once you do the math it comes out to about $3/hr.

And what is this theory that the world is under attack by a of glut money-hungry plastic surgeons and personal injury lawyers? I don't know about the latter, but I have some insight into the former.

Fear not, Mr. McCullough. There are no more residency spots for plastic surgeons this year than there were last year... or the year before that.

Franco Castro-Marin

Tucson resident