General practitioners generally get the short end of the stick, in pay and prestige. They also have shorter lives. The mortality rate of specialists is 30% lower than theirs, two Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. statisticians reported last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Looking for reasons, the statisticians guessed that specialists make more money, can afford longer vacations and get better medical care.
According to these statistics, the most long-lived specialists are pathologists. Shortest (at nine-tenths of the general practitioners' rate): dermatologists, who have a high death rate from cancer and leukemia, possibly the result of continual exposure to...
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