This quote about medical integrity from Benjamin Rush, MD, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and physician to George Washington, stands on its own and needs no further comment from me about how prophetic his words have turned out to be:
"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privilege to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic. The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom."
(This quote can be found, among other places, in "The Great Quotations," compiled by George Seldes.)
