The Medical Council of India has published a list of punishments to be meted out to any doctor accepting any form of gift from pharmaceutical companies. This is like giving aspirin for fever without treating the underlying pneumonia. There are hundreds of pharmaceutical companies in India and a new one opens everyday. A new company surveys the market and finds out which drugs generate the maximum prescriptions and then comes to the market with those same drugs in different brand names. Some drugs are sold under fifty brand names. Obviously it is impossible to remember so many brands so an individual doctor sticks to one or two. To increase sales companies resort to giving gifts ranging from pens to cars and pays for doctors to attend conferences, usually held in scenic resorts. Banning doctors from receiving gifts without reducing the total number of drug companies will solve nothing. Companies will simply deliver the gifts to the doctor's residence or give cash. There seems to be daily assaults on the medical profession. Forcing doctors to serve in rural areas, criminalising gifts and setting up courses to turn out more quacks. There are no such strictures on lawyers who do not turn up for hearings, bribe witnesses, cause riots in courts and are preventing the entry of foreign law firms. Laws are formulated by lawyers and civil servants and passed by politicians. At least doctors do not create diseases but these three groups of people are a disease afflicting the nation yet we can do nothing to punish them. So why are they so vindictive? Is it because people still respect doctors and despise them as gutter slime?