As the spokesman for organized medicine, the A.M.A. holds that changes on the medical scene should be made by doctors, and laymen had best keep hands off. This week a vigorous dissent comes from a ruggedly individualistic Yankee doctor with a brilliant record of medical achievement. Says Boston's Dr. James Howard Means* in Doctors, People, and Government (Little, Brown; $3.50): "The impulse to reform in medical public affairs comes usually from without, and resistance to it from within the majority fold of organized medicine ... It is only under the lash of public opinion that organized medicine makes any social progress."
Is...