Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/380

374 Admiral Charles F. Stokes, surgeon-general of the navy, by General Walter Wyman, of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, by Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, of the bureau of chemistry, by governors of states, by the Conference of State and Territorial Boards of Health, by the United Mine Workers of America, by the National Grange, by the republican and democratic platforms, and by numerous other organizations.

What is the principle of this bill which is advocated by thousands of men trained in medicine or sanitary science and interested in the public welfare?

Section 7, which embodies the main purpose of the Owen bill, reads as follows: "That it shall be the duty and province of such a department of public health to supervise all matters within the control of the federal government relating to public health and to diseases of animal life."

Section 2 of this bill deals with the unification under a secretary of public health of the various agencies now existing which affect the medical, surgical, biological or sanitary service.

There has recently been formed an organization which calls itself "The National League for Medical Freedom." It has for its purpose to combat the Owen bill; it is opposed to the establishment of a federal department or bureau of health. The name of this organization is certainly, if not intentionally, misleading. It can not claim to battle for medical freedom, for there is not a word in the entire bill which could be interpreted as limiting the practise of medicine to any particular school. Their claim that the establishment of such a bureau of health would have any resemblance to a medical trust is entirely unfounded.

The life insurance and industrial insurance companies which advocate this bill certainly have no desire to limit medical freedom or to repress any system which offers the chance of lengthening human life. These companies do not favor medical partisanship and their sole interest is to prolong the lives of their policy-holders by whatever means possible. Their actuaries state specifically that they believe human life could and would be lengthened by the establishment of a federal department of health.

Lee K. Frankel, Ph.D., representing the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, is a member of the Committee of One Hundred, appointed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science to further the propaganda for the establishment of such a department. Neither the above-mentioned great newspaper nor any of the leading spirits of the "National League for Medical Freedom," all of whom, I regret to say, have allowed themselves to ascribe the worst motives to the members of the committee, will deny that the names of the officers