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While we must remain vigilant, I suspect that the psychologists’ campaign to win prescribing privileges will eventuate in very little. Assuming for the moment that they do get legislative approval somewhere, after their first inevitable, negligent medication death, the malpractice lawyers will pounce. (I can already hear the cross-examination: "Doctor, it was you who prescribed the drug that killed my client—a wife and mother of three - wasn’t it? Tell me, doctor, where did you go to medical school? You didn’t?! So then, you’re not a real doctor, are you?")
Psychologists, like chiropractors before them, are politically adroit and legislatively relentless, and it’s conceivable that they may eventually persuade a few states to give them the right to prescribe. But after that first million-dollar verdict, few will make use of it.
Martin Blinder, M.D.
San Anselmo, Calif.