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Sir: Your statement, "Flying doctors had a fatal-accident rate four times as high as the average for all other private pilots" [Aug. 5] is misleading. Physicians with better-than-average incomes have high-performance aircraft, fly more than other groups, and therefore have greater exposure to accidents. Even so, members of the Flying Physicians Association, numbering 2,000 (about half the known U.S. and Canadian physician pilots), have an accident rate approximately the same as the average. We believe that our requirements of certification of higher aviation skills, such as basic instrument ability as a requirement for membership renewal, result in more responsible and safer flying.
H. D. VICKERS, M.D.
Editor
The Flying Physician Little Falls, N.Y.
Sir: Your story on flying physicians comes as no great surprise to any commercial flight instructor. Two years ago, at an instructor refresher course, instructors from all over the U.S. were unanimous in believing that doctors were their worst students. They were also unanimously of the opinion that once a doctor received a private license, he represented the poorest product of the instructor's efforts. The cause? You simply cannot tell an M.D. anything. The good doctor knows it all. The FAA official hit the nail on the head when he said, "Doctors fly with the feeling that they are omnipotent."
ROBERT B. LOGAN
Commercial Flight Instructor
Smyrna, Ga.
Don't Go Near the Water
Sir: Of Tropical Fish Hobbyist Herbert Axelrod [July 29], TIME says "he delights in swimming in piranha-infested rivers just to prove that piranhas are not man-eaters." This is not in accord with my childhood memories of placing my hand against the glass wall of the piranha tank in the hometown aquarium for the thrill of watching these aggressive Lilliputians try to attack the hand.
A piranha-fishing trip last month in the headwaters of the Amazon River confirmed my impressions. The ferocity with which these creatures went after the bait was remarkable. The hands of our Indian guides were covered with scars of old piranha bites. Upon catching one of these tiny demons, the guides immediately had to cut certain nerves about the piranha's mouth to prevent its biting us.
A hog tossed from the boat was devoured by a school of piranhas in 15 minutes. When the local people wish to drive cattle across these rivers, they sacrifice the oldest cow, driving it into the river first as bait. While the attention of the piranhas is focused on consuming that animal, the rest of the cattle cross in relative safety a few feet upstream. It is not difficult to see how, given the proper opportunity, a school of piranhas could devour a human being.
Swimming in these rivers proves nothing about piranhas; not every square foot of the Amazon River system is infested by them, any more than every patch of our Rockies is covered with mountain lions. Our guides also bathed every day—generally toward the middle of the rivers where the water flowed freely.
BEVERLY MAY CARL
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Not Guilty