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In an editorial in the April 1982 issue of the Archives (1982;117:391), Sugerman discussed "Surgeons and the Surgical Intensive Care Unit." With an amused smile, I laid this editorial aside after I read it. Amused, because the opinions were expressed with such unbridled fervor. Instances of hyperbole such as "it is absolutely essential that..." were followed by one-sided accounts of surgeons' contributions. Finally, an almost touching concern was expressed that surgeons might find themselves as "mere operating room technicians" or "locked out of [their] own intensive care units and unable to carry forward [their] glorious heritage." All of us at one time or another are angry or frustrated and write something intemperate, but most of us don't mail it. We feel good for having vented our spleen and lucky that the manuscript did not see print.
I would have been content to ignore Sugerman's editorial as an occasion in which