Phenylketonuria and the Practice of Medicine

If one can learn all of medicine from the detailed study of one disease, may we not also learn some truth about all of medical practice from careful study of the changes in medical practice concerning one disease? The intervention of over 80% of the state legislatures into the patient-doctor relationship, with legal directions to the physicians, has produced interesting changes, worthy of juxtaposition for analysis.

Consider who is the better physician—the one who recognizes signs of retarded development in a young, fair-haired child and selectively orders laboratory studies to establish the diagnosis of phenylketonuria; or the physician who receives a note in the mail that one of his newborn patients has hyperphenylalanemia and who then refers his patient to a doctor at a special center for diagnosis and treatment of phenylketonuria? Who would argue with the conclusion that the diagnostician is the better physician since the second physician's referral