"My daughter's best friend is a radiologist who is currently 33. She has just taken her first job. "
She'll be replaced by software or outsourced foreign labor before she retires. Why should we protect HER job?
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Who's Reading Your X-Ray?
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: November 16, 2003
nytimes.com
SANJAY SAINI was not prepared for the hate mail. A radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Saini thought he had found a clever way to relieve an acute shortage of specialists who could read X-rays and M.R.I. scans. The hospital would beam images electronically from some scans to India, to be worked on by radiologists there.
But the arrangement, made late last year with a company in India, has touched off a minor furor. It turns out that even American radiologists, with their years of training and annual salaries of $250,000 or more, worry about their jobs moving to countries with lower wages, in much the same way that garment knitters, blast-furnace operators and data-entry clerks do.
Since the news got out, Dr. Saini has received a flurry of angry e-mail messages, most of them anonymous, urging him to stop. The American College of Radiology, the professional group for the country's 30,000 radiologists, has set up a task force to look at the offshore transfer of radiology services. And the online discussion groups of AuntMinnie.com, a Web site for radiologists, have been buzzing with debate about the prospects for competition from ''radiology sweatshops'' abroad.
''This teleradiology thing is another nail in the coffin of the job market,'' wrote someone on the Web site who identified himself as a radiologist. ''Who needs to pay us $350,000/yr if they can get a cheap Indian radiologist for $25,000/yr.'' |
