The Communist rulers of Central and Eastern Europe have for many years boasted of their medical services, claiming that all past injustices have been eliminated and asserting that the general standard of health throughout the Soviet-run area has been immeasurably raised. A study by the Free Europe Committee, Inc., as recently revealed in the committee publication News from Behind the Iron Curtain , shows that these claims are composed almost entirely of fiction, flourish, and falsehood. Administratively, medicine behind the Iron Curtain is based entirely on the Soviet model, in which all medical and dental personnel are relegated to the status of state employees whose places, hours, and conditions of work, as well as salaries and promotions, are decided by the state. The Communists' statistics hide the heart of the problem—the human aspect of medicine—the question whether a physician can serve both state and patient when the interests of each are