1224 



The education within the United States of the 28,000 medical doctors 

 from the LDCs, he indicated, "would have cost at least U.S.$li^ 

 billion." Henderson quotes Harold Howland, former Deputy Assist- 

 ant Secretary of State, as estimating the imported scientists and 

 engineers at nearly 100,000 and estimating also "at least $4 billion the 

 saving to the United States in total educational costs." Mr. Henderson 

 continues : 



The above concerns only value at the moment of entering a career in a devel- 

 oped country. The value which the professional migrant adds during a full 

 career in a developed country at the salary and production levels of developed 

 countries would be, of course, greatly larger, perhaps on the order of twenty 

 times or more the figures for the U.S. value of the education at the time of 

 entering the job and certainly in tens of billions of dollars for the United States 

 and in the billions of dollars for other developed countries."^' 



Savings in Medical School Construction. — As noted earlier in the 

 study, various sources attempt to give some idea of educational savings 

 to the United States by estimating the equivalent number of medical 

 schools needed to educate from native stock a given number of incom- 

 ing FMGs. Dr. Kelly West said in 1966 that FMGs accounted for 18 

 percent of the annual additions of American manpower. In terms 

 of cost, he said, the United States would have to build and operate 

 about 12 new medical schools, at an operating cost of some $8 million 

 dollars per year per medical center. "In other words," he noted, "the 

 value of this migration may be estimated at something of the order 

 to us of $100 million per year. . . ." ^^^ 



The PAHO report of 1966 on brain drain from Latin America 

 declared that every year about 300 physicians migrated to the United 

 States from Latin America. This number, it said, is equivalent to the 

 annual output of three large American medical schools. It would cost 

 at least $60 million to build three teaching medical schools, and, it 

 added, more than $15 million to operate them.^^^ 



In a recent article, Leslie Westoff writes, "It has no doubt been more 

 economical in the short run to import doctors than to build the 35 or 

 more medical schools we need, each costing $20 million and $5 million 

 a year to maintain," "^^ 



Tables 32 and 33 offer some rough estimates of the number of medi- 

 cal schools that would have to be built in order to train from native 

 stock the equivalent number of FMGs entering the country in the fiscal 

 years 1971 and 1972. No attempt has been made to estimate costs of the 

 medical schools either in construction or operation. (However, Mar- 

 gulies and Bloch, writing in 1969, estimate the cost of constructing one 

 new medical school to be at least $50 million and the annual operating 

 cost of a medical school at an average of $3.8 million.) ^^^ 



^^Ibid., p. 32. Mr. Henderson adds In a footnote: "Such figures will seem more modest 

 when it is recalled that the invention of power steering alone by a single, not very well- 

 known (native) American inventor Is credited with having added $5 billion to the U.S. 

 economy." 



5M Department of State, Proceedings of Workshop on the International Migration of 

 Talent and Skills, October 1966, p. 40. In an article published in 1969, Professor Adams 

 quotes Dr. West as saying that there was evidence that the annual immigration of phy- 

 sicians exceeded 2,000. These immigrants, he added, constituted about 16 percent of the 

 entries into the American medical profession, and noted that it would require 16 new 

 medical schools to produce the physicians now supplied by imported manpower. (Adams, 

 "Talent That Won't Stay Put," p. 79.) 



^^ Report on Brain Drain from Latin America. Pan American Health Organization, 1966, 

 p. 16. The same data were presented by Dr. Kldd in Hearings before the Senate Judiciary 

 Committee. See International Migration of Talent and Skills, 1968, p. 77. 



Beo Westoff. op. clt.. p. 80. 



s«i Margulies and Bloch, op. cit., p. 75. 



