1 Chairman, Department of Pediatrics, The Catholic Medical Center of Brooklyn and Queens, Inc., 88-25 153rd Street, Jamaica, New York 11432
I am deeply concerned over Dr. Gil's report1 on his survey of child abuse. My concern covens many facets of his study: The definition of physical abuse; the use of reports from 1967 which was, for many states the first or second year of their reporting law; setting out to count a certain medical-social problem; and becoming lost in the forest of poverty and hunger of children and the willingness to "move from quantitative to the qualitative ...," and reaching conclusions that cannot be supported by the data.