Control and Responsibility in the Powerful Professions

Abstract

Everywhere in the United States the professions have reached new heights of social power and prestige. Everywhere, because of the power of their special knowledge, they are of increasing consequence in the lives of individuals and in the affairs of groups, the polity, and the society as a whole. Yet everywhere they are also in trouble, criticized for their selfishness, their public irresponsiblity, their lack of effective self-control, and for their resistance to requests for more lay participation in the vital decisions professionals make affecting laymen. The signs of this trouble are manifest in many quarters. In California the governor has for the first time appointed laymen to every one of the state boards that regulate professional conduct; formerly these boards were monopolized and dominated, run in their own interests, by the professionals themselves. In New York State the legislature has passed new laws requiring more effective peer control over delinquent medical practitioners.1 Also in New York, The Board of Regents, which has responsibility for the public control of some twenty-nine professions, has recently voted to permit professions to do limited advertising in newspapers and magazines. Further, it has issued a new regulation requiring health professionals to show a patient his medical records upon request, except when this would adversely affect the patient's health.2 This latter exception is an application of the therapeutic privilege, which sets certain limits on the