After two weeks of a medical strike that involved 85% of Belgium's 12,000 physicians and dentists, the nation showed no serious ill effects. Hundreds of doctors remained defiantly self-exiled in Luxembourg, France and The Neth erlands, protesting the government's fee-fixing medical insurance plan that strike leaders condemn as the first step toward socialized medicine and an unwarranted invasion of the privacy be tween doctor and patient. Despite a number of possibly preventable deaths, and two doctors held for questioning, there was so far no real case against the medical profession for "fatal negligence," thanks largely to the service degarde — a skeleton service set up in major hospitals to handle medical emergencies. It worked so well that many Belgians were wondering if the country really needed as many doctors as it had.
Besides, the Hippocratic oath, which commands a physician to put his patients before himself, was proving to be an effective strikebreaker. Many doctors were secretly, and a bit shamefacedly, still treating their patients. Doctors in Brussels began telephoning their patients to say they were back on the job —but please keep it quiet. The strikebreakers were not beyond exercising a little lighthearted blackmail: one dental surgeon replaced a broken bridge for a politician on the condition that he would not use his newly recovered power of speech to lobby against the strike. In Ghent's Refuge Ste. Marie, a surgeon asked for police protection to complete a series of four operations. His striking colleagues protested that the surgery could wait—and threatened to stop him if he carried it out.
Realizing that their united front was disintegrating, and faced with spreading scarlet fever and other outbreaks among Belgian children, the strike leaders agreed to negotiate. But after 14 hours of wrangling, the talks broke down. The strikers tried an ultimatum; they even threatened to stop emergency hospital service. That was it. The government angrily announced that it would start drafting physicians. Once in uniform, the doctors would work when and where they were told to. Said Premier Theo Lefevre: "We will take all measures necessary to prevent the situation from worsening still more."