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In the January/February edition, Charles Peters, in his "Tilting at Windmills" column, cites a Washington Post report on underreporting of crime in Philadelphia.

For the record: The Post report was a summary of investigative disclosures by The Philadelphia Inquirer, which, in a series of articles over the last year, brought to light a longstanding Police Department practice of "downgrading" crimes to make the city's crime statistics look better.

The Inquirer reports prompted numerous changes, including an overhaul of incident reporting procedures in Philadelphia and the creation by Police Commissioner John F. Timoney of an independent panel to audit the department's crime figures and help him ferret out fakery.

MARC DUVOISIN CITY EDITOR THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Philadelphia, PA

Shut Out

I enjoyed the "Tilting at Windmills" piece on social workers in welfare (March 1999) and was pleased that someone understands the contributions our profession can make.

It wasn't so much disillusionment that drove the social workers from eligibility work, though. The implementation of the 1968 amendments to the Social Security Act specifically required the separation of "eligibility" from "services" such as foster care and adoption. Eligibility workers could be clerks with high school level education. Social workers were to be used for services programs.

Before then, the strategy was to assign all welfare applicants to trained social workers who could help them overcome their poverty through collecting child support, marriage, and work. Social workers were eliminated from the process--they didn't simply withdraw.

LEON GINSBERG, Professor, College of Social Work, University of South Carolina Columbia, SC

Code Blue

At about 4 a.m. last night I finished reading Robert Worths disturbing article "Exhaustion That Kills" (January/February 1999). I was awake at this hour because my girlfriend, a third-year medical student, was up preparing to go to the hospital for work. She will be home tomorrow evening.

It is in their third year as medical students that our future doctors begin hospital rotations and start keeping outrageous hours. Shifts are long, sleep is infrequent, and though such hours may lead to more teaching time, the result is that students hardly care about patients. I know my girlfriend is more concerned with getting even a modicum of sleep than with actually taking care of her patients. If this is the attitude we are instilling in young...