DATE: Sunday, May 18, 1997                  TAG: 9705180035

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   37 lines

111 RECEIVE DEGREES AT EVMS CEREMONY

The 22nd class of the Eastern Virginia Medical School was welcomed into the profession Saturday. The 100 graduates were encouraged by Arnold S. Relman, M.D., editor-in-chief emeritus of The New England Journal of Medicine, to stand against the ``business of medicine.''

The graduation was held at Chrysler Hall before a packed house of cheering graduates, their families and friends.

Eleven students were awarded doctorates in biomedical sciences.

The class gift to the school was a granite bench dedicated to the memory of Ted Roth, a member of the class of 1997 who died in an automobile accident in 1994.

The Class of 1997 had an overall pass rate of 99 percent on Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination and a 100 percent pass rate on Step 2.

Sixty of the graduates will go into the primary care field. Forty-three of the 100 class members are from Virginia, with 27 from California and four from Utah.

Relman, a professor emeritus of medicine and social science at Harvard Medical School, beseeched the graduates to align with one another and attempt to keep big business at bay in their practice of medicine.

With more and more physicians becoming ``labor'' for privately run, for-profit health care providers, Relman said it was up to these new graduates to preserve the caring and nurturing aspect of medicine.

``Medicine is not a business,'' said Relman.

``Those who believe that . . . either know nothing about medicine . . . or have never been a patient themselves. The essence of being a physician is quite different from being a businessman.''

Two prominent local businessmen - Charles F. Burroughs Jr. and Harry B. Price Jr. - were awarded honorary degrees for their contributions to EVMS.

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