Letters

Thursday, February 5, 1998

Letters

Freedom to choose

I was pleased to see a sane voice on Social Security in the
Daily Bruin’s article, "Current Social Security plan full of
flaws," (Feb. 3). Social Security is truly a scheme that will come
tumbling down on this and future generations after it collapses due
to its flawed nature. The writer, Matthew Gever, did leave out a
very important point though, and that is that Chile’s privatization
for its workers at the time was voluntary! Workers who were paying
in to the state system at the time were given the choice of staying
in the state system or going private, and within the first couple
of years, virtually the entire population opted for the privatized
plan! Chile did this without raising interest rates, raising taxes,
or deficit spending! America should follow the path of our
Latin-American brother nation by giving us all the freedom to
choose!

Daniel B. Rego

Second-year

Political science

Medical school myths

I grimaced when I read Michelle Navarro’s piece on how "stressed
out" pre-meds feel in "Premeditated Insanity," (Jan. 30). Her
article only serves to perpetuate the myths creating the problem
she pretends to investigate.

As an example of the inaccuracies reported, UCLA offers
admission to many more than 121 applicants to get a medical school
class of 121 students. Did it occur to Navarro or her editors that
Kaplan might be a biased source for determining how important MCAT
scores are for admission? Although Kaplan makes a hefty profit by
convincing students it is, spending hundreds of dollars "paying for
things like MCAT classes" certainly is not a requirement for being
accepted to medical school. Neither are the reported endless hours
of research or volunteering.

Becoming a doctor does not have to be the path strewn with dead
bodies, depicted on page 3. It is a shame that pre-meds make
themselves miserable trying to figure out how to get into medical
school. Instead of doing some good research to help these students,
the Daily Bruin encourages their suffering with sloppy
reporting.

Jack Middlebrooks

UCLA School of Medicine