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[Not economics, but rather a propos to the current discussion on  
censorship, and to the more longstanding concern about the place of  
history of economics in the economics discipline. The following post  
comes from a different discussion list --Mary Schweitzer  
<[log in to unmask]>] 
 
"Dr.Volker Hess" <[log in to unmask]> writes: 
 
This is a cry for help from German History of Medicine! 
As you probably know medical education in Germany is strictly scheduled 
by government regulations - the so called "Approbationsordnung fuer 
Aerzte" (licency regulations for physicians) issued by the Ministry of 
Health. The medical faculties of all German universities are committed 
to plan their curriculum according to this Approbationsordnung. 
The nation wide regulations were last reformed in 1971, and since then 
plans for a new Approbationsordnung have been under discussion. Last 
month the Ministry of Health has issued a draft of the new schedule, and 
so we learned that medical history is no longer mentioned as a subject 
of medical education at all. This has come as a surprise because all 
former reform plans included medical history along with ethics and 
theory of medicine as an essential complement to the scientific and 
medical part of medical education. Moreover the elimination of Medical 
History had never been put up for discussion in the Medical Faculties 
and Societies.  Since just now funds for universities have been heavily 
reduced, there is no money to spend for equipment and staff that are not 
essential for keeping up the educational frame set up by the 
Approbationsordnung. So the discussion to cross out Medical History from 
the central schedule will result in closing down the units for Medical 
History now existent at most of the German universities. 
[rest of the post snipped] 
 
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