I HAVE read with interest all the negative comments in the press regarding the doctors in York Medical Group who have won their recent legal action.

I have been a patient of Dr Kaliszer and Dr Evans for the past ten years and have received wonderful treatment from them for myself and my family during this time.

I can, however, understand how distressing it may be for patients who have to leave doctors whom they trust and have confidence in, but I feel that if there is any blame it is not with the remaining doctors.

I admit I do not know the full details of the split but there are two sides to every story and so far only one has been portrayed. I feel sure that my GPs would not have entered into litigation lightly.

I can only imagine the doctors wishing to leave the practice have broken a contract which we all know will carry consequences. The health centre is a beautiful purpose-built building and this will have to be paid for.

Doctors are not only caring, compassionate individuals but have homes, families and mortgages to support. They, like many of us, have a business to run. If their financial commitments were based on a certain amount of patients when predicting cost implications and any two of the partners decided to pull out, surely it cannot be the fault of the remaining doctors.

They have broken no contract and this litigation will cost them dearly. Perhaps it was naivet on the part of Dr Ashley and Dr Towler but I suggest it may be them not the remaining doctors who have let the patients down.

I will continue to support the remaining GPs and am sure many other grateful patients will do so also.

Gail Smith,

The Village,

Osbaldwick,

York.

...THE words of Madison at the time of the American War of Independence spring to mind: "If all men were virtuous there would be no need of governments" - nor I presume of the law!

When people with academic status use the law to fence-off their working territory, things somehow do not seem right.

York has had a great reason to suspect its doctors of recent years (we cannot 'fence' or even laugh that off'). Front page exposures of the sort seen last week do little to support the view that patients come first.

Politics, especially medical politics, were intended to make things work, not to maintain group status or to maximise profits.

Those boundaries were never 'of the people,' 'by the people' and 'for the people'. They may well have been made 'legal' but they are certainly not democratic in its proper meaning.

Dr David Morris,

Priory Street,

York.

Updated: 12:32 Thursday, June 28, 2001