Almost a third of doctors surveyed said they had not told patients about useful treatments because they believed the patients' insurance would not cover them, a study reports today.

You point out that a minority of doctors surveyed said reducing the work hours of young doctors in training was a good way to reduce errors.

At the same time, a fourth of the 258 doctors surveyed in the New York study said they believed it was not unethical to refuse to care for people infected with the AIDS virus.

According to computer records from Scott-Levin, almost half of the 503 doctors surveyed from October 1995 to December 1998 said they had received marketing appeals from the company's sales representatives on unapproved uses.

Four doctors surveyed by the Sunday Times newspaper in Singapore said the number of their patients with respiratory problems had increased by 20 percent during the haze.

Meanwhile, over 80% of the doctors surveyed said they wanted to learn more about alternative medicine.

Far more often than they knew they should, the doctors surveyed said, they overtreated dying patients with life-prolonging measures and inadequately treated their pain.

Thirty percent of doctors surveyed by the American Medical Association in November said they felt no ethical responsibility to treat AIDS patients.

Further, 50 percent of female doctors surveyed by the Commonwealth Fund reported incomes of $100,000 or less, compared with 22 percent of men.

But of 1,745 American doctors surveyed in 10 states, 23 percent said they would not care for AIDS patients if they had a choice.