Show GENERAL 1 HUGHS JOHNSON jcurd V anuito u AIR ain POLITICS up to IS 13 months ago the th e chief beef of this column was the appalling serfs of commercial airplane accidents and the sloppy work and unsatisfactory reports of the bureau of the department of commerce in charge under the former secretary it was a political pot house and the influence of big aviation interests was not conspicuous by its absence then after four years effort senator mccarran got his bill through setting up the civil aeronautics authority as an independent non parti san agency it separated executive function from judicial and legislative ones put the former in the hands of an administrator set up an independent safety board to plug up the ghastly gap in the departmental administration the authority was wa promptly manned with competent experts this column seen anything to kick about for more than a year in which about passenger miles were flown without a de death athan an unprecedented safety record CAA is not entitled to all the credit but lt it rates its share it is now proposed under the reorganization act to abolish the safety board and reduce the authority to p 4 lw D I 1 1 W in SENATOR mccarran Is his reform doomed old status as a bureau of th the e department part ment of commerce right t back where we started from many in congress the commer cial air pilots and informed air travelers are up in arms against this shocking proposal but the big aviation interests are not saying a word they prefer king log to king stork and a nd king sugar papa most of all the dope is that the change will go through if they do not oppose it it is doubtful if they will but the air traveling public ought to join the air pilots in forceful opposition 0 these are the people whose hose w hides are endangered there are only two apparent reasons tor for wrecking a unit that was working so well to go back to a system that one is politics and the other is amateur professorial piddling with an organization chart in the rarefied academic atmosphere mo sphere of the brownlow committee neither is good enough poll tics bics is what we dont want here the best reorganization chart in the world Is no good without the right men in the proper places with unhampered opportunity to do their stuff MEDICAL advancement it if the astonishing developments in medicine continue at their recent rate many will have to be shot on judgment day there is a professional prejudice against laymen discussing these developments the most cruel decap eions have resulted from ignorant ballyhoo of quack cures the medical profession has suffered so much on the rebound that any popular publicity touches its most sensitive spots recent developments are marvelous the control of many types of pneumonia and one of the most stubborn social diseases by dine the fill experimental five day cure for the checking checkan 9 of the anaemia of 0 old age the these e are but an acceleration of the improvement in tour four decades which saw the conquest of typhoid typhus yellow fever and several tropical diseases surgery does not lag in a recent minor siege with it myself I 1 ran across a professional paper of which a coauthor co author with a navy surgeon is one of our most distinguished a army medicos the service group has lagged behind none in its contribution trib ution to this revolution which Is revising the mortality tables by amazingly extending the years of our lives reed need gorgas keller keiler grayson metcalf magee mcintyre they are the peers of any the thing in this paper that would astonish anybody and which I 1 myself have seen and felt I 1 is a the tremendous advance in anaesthesia another mystic word and battlefield surgery since soldiers in battle have had to have their shattered legs cut oft off with no more surcease than a horn born of hootch anaesthesia means eliminating or dulling pain under the knife this art has so far advanced that under a competent surgeon I 1 would have little apprehension of either danger or pain under any ordinary operation |