Editor:

The best part of Drew Thompson’s story (“Med school looks to offset cuts,” April 22), was not in the description of our medical school’s budget cuts and not in the details of possible governmental or administrative “solutions.” It was in the last paragraph where Thompson describes the reaction of Bill Shelton, the applicant: “He plans to take the (MCAT) again and hope for better results next year.”

This should have been the focus of the story. It should have contained the Toyota corollary, where in 2004, with the average price of gasoline exceeding $2.25/gal, Prius sales doubled from 24,000 to 50,000 in the same year, thereafter doubling again in 2005. With Shelton’s plans to improve his personal performance, it should have been mentioned that by preventing iatrogenic malady, the whole discussion of doctor shortages would be nearly nil.

In the face of scarce resources, oil or medical school positions, people improve to compete, and we the people, who receive their goods and services, benefit from that improvement. Adam Smith’s invisible hand becomes inescapably palpable when people like Shelton “promote an end which was no part of (their) intention.”

Zack Oakey,
Ophthalmology Department, Lab Faculty