Doctors in the UK are talking of going on strike. They want a 30% pay rise. And less time with patients. But look at what happens when doctors betray their principles, embrace mammon, go on strike and leave patients to cope without professional medical help. The following short extract is taken from my book Why and How Doctors Kill More People than Cancer. 'You might imagine that without doctors people would be dying like flies in autumn. You'd be wrong; dead wrong. When doctors in Israel went on strike for a month, admissions to hospital dropped by 85% with only the most urgent cases being admitted, but despite this the death rate in Israel dropped by 50% - the largest drop since the previous doctors' strike 20 years earlier - to its lowest ever recorded level. Much the same thing has happened wherever doctors have gone on strike. In Bogota, Colombia doctors went on strike for 52 days and there was a 35% fall in the mortality rate. In Los Angeles a doctors' strike resulted in an 18% reduction in the death rate. During the strike there were 60% fewer operations in 17 major hospitals. At the end of the strike the death rate went back up to normal. And I am told that when hospitals and clinics were closed down by terrorists in Sri Lanka, the Registrar General reported that the number of reported deaths had fallen. Whatever statistics are consulted, whatever evidence is examined, the conclusion has to be the same: doctors are a hazard rather than an asset to any community.' by Dr. Vernon Coleman