While clarifying on the matter whether professionals other than MBBS doctors (who are registered with Medical Council of India MCI or State Medical Council) can sign medical test reports, Deputy Secretary MCI Dr Parul Goel maintained that only the registered doctors can and not professionals that have been awarded any other degree. The other degrees include MSc, PhD, degrees in fields like Biochemistry, Microbiology, etc. The order has been justified as preventing any malpractice by what have been described as quacks in the field. The order not only fails on its face value but its place value as well, because the problem apparently is not who signs or attests the medical reports but how much professionally sound they are regarding knowledge, information and judgment. The order certainly puts highly qualified professionals other than MBBS doctors like those in the field of Biochemistry and Microbiology at a disadvantage, and it is ridiculous. How are PhDs or those with degrees in specialized fields in medical science quacks and MBBS doctors qualified? It makes some sense in the case of lab technicians as there has been mushrooming of technicians who are trained in institutes having little to no credibility. But in the case of fields like Biochemistry the council may be forgetting that these professionals at times teach the MBBS doctors while they graduate. Besides certain fields impart greater knowledge and know how about certain medical tests and analyses than a mere MBBS degree. Further, if the decision is compared to that of granting permissions to pharmaceutical units to manufacture medicines and to those in the trade of selling these drugs, there is clearly a disparity. In fact quacks and unscrupulous elements have been manufacturing substandard medicine and even selling substandard medicine being aware of the fact, which goes mostly unchecked and unheeded. The governments or medical authorities should have applied pressure on the government to cease the licenses of these elements and to be careful while issuing new ones. But the practice is that anyone with the pharma background, no matter the institution or its credibility, is given the permission to sell medicine which has a direct impact on the health of the people, and as has been seen a negative impact in the case of those freely selling substandard medicine. When there is no check put in place to curb sale of low quality substandard medicine, how can signing of medical reports be of any significance. The problem in both the cases is the credibility of those who are given the permission to practice freely. Lastly, there are MBBS doctors, like other professionals, who for profit allow their seals/signs to be used and who do not even have any idea about the actual reports.

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