DRINKER DOWN

With the resolution outlawing personal profit from patients for medical inventions finally adopted, the Corporation is well rid of an ugly situation which has hung its head for the last year. By conclusively declaring that no members of the Medical School or the School of Public Health should take out for his own profit a patent upon any invention that affects the health of the public, the University has wisely refused to assume any responsibility for the approaching law-suit in which Drinker will attempt to save his name if not his money.

That the Corporation should have finally found it necessary to put into so many words a regulation which for years has been considered one of the unwritten laws of medical ethics is an indication of the tremendous pressure that was brought to bear upon it by the medical world and even the petitions signed at the Medical School. Drinker's performance has once and for all proved that the hands off policy of the University must come to an end, and that the medical code can no longer be left unwritten while a profiteer usurps the profession.

Although the Corporation as an afterthought tactfully suggests that the resolution is in no wise ot be taken as a reflection on either Drinker or the Collins Company, it is too obvious that as the University, retreating from the melee, determines to forestall a similar abuse, it is at the same time making a final pass at the enfant terrible.