The GP has a duty of medical confidentiality. Furthermore, there is (fortunately) mounting financial pressure plus rating portals so that GPs no longer get away with abysmal customer service.
In driving matters British GPs are obliged to report anyone who they feel should not be driving and it’s one of a few areas in which they’re allowed to break confidentiality. I would imagine if it came up, that flying would fall under the same category.
Incidentally, there is some evidence that patient satisfaction is correlated with increased mortality:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kaifalkenberg/2013/01/02/why-rating-your-doctor-is-bad-for-your-health/
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1108766
lots of the monkeys have a form of colour vision where the males are all colour-blind but the females generally have colour vision
I thought that was largely true for all species of apes including homo sapiens 
there’s a theory that colours can be distracting and in jungle warfare colour anomalous soldiers were reportedly better at spotting the enemy.
Coloured sunglasses are often sold as being better at spotting certain things. IIRC, green ones are better at spotting white buildings. Brown ones at something else. Grey ones are no good at anything 
No idea if there is any truth in that.
Personally, I just use a GPS to find the only place I actually need to find (the destination airport)
I thought that was largely true for all species of apes including homo sapiens
Answering literal-mindedly, in general women don’t have much better colour vision than men. One of my former colleagues was pilloried for a paper suggesting that women innately have different colour preferences to men:
and though my supervisor reckoned that women were more likely to get perfect scores on the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test, I vaguely recall the instruction manual suggested the opposite. There are a few minor differences in retinal pigmentation that may contribute to this. But anomalous colour-vision, or ‘colour-blindness’ is more common in men because the genes coding for cone-cell photopigments are on the X chromosome. Women have two of these, men just one. So women have a backup and are less likely to end up with just L (red) cones, or just M (green) cones. They can end up with red, green and orange cones, in addition to blue cones, and these tetrachromatic women may be able to see colours that no men ever can. But they’re relatively rare.
That’s colour preferences, but I recall reading (probably UK CAA) that about 99% of CVD pilots are males.
Of course the vast majority of pilots are male anyway so maybe the stats were skewed?
The feeling is that there may be physiological differences underlying the colour preferences. e.g. perhaps men are more sensitive along the blue-yellow axis drawing their attention away from the red-green axis. But even if so, these differences are minor compared with the differences in sensitivity you see with colour-anomalous vision.
If (say) 10% of X-chromosomes are anomalous, 10% of men will end up with anomalous colour vision, but only 10% x 10% of women will carry two anomalous chromosomes = 1%. But even then, the women might have one X-chromosome with a good L-photopigment and one with a good M-photopigment and may end up with some functional colour vision anyway.
That is how it works in new-world monkeys (other than Howler monkeys which have evolved trichromacy independently). Humans have two different photopigments on the X-chromosome – L and M (long and medium wavelength sensitive). New world monkeys only have one, but there are several forms of it spread amongst the population. All the males are complete dichromats but some have an L pigment and some have an M pigment (and there are a few intermediate forms as well).
Some of the females have copies of both genes, but in each individual photoreceptor only one X-chromosome is functional, so if you put their retinae under a microscope you see a photoreceptor mosaic with both L and M cones. The interesting bit is that their brain learns to make use of the extra information the two different cone types provide even though the neurones can’t tell which type of cone they’re connected to biochemically.
The State has no business dictating an individual’s attitude to risk, otherwise they would ban scuba, mountain climbing, etc.
But they still won’t allow me to drive my car without a seat belt, or ride my motorcycle without a helmet….
they still won’t allow me to drive my car without a seat belt, or ride my motorcycle without a helmet
In the US, the place where the subject legislation is being debated in congress, that is not uniformly true although only one US state has neither seat belt law nor helmet law (New Hampshire). Link
Somewhat on topic in terms of indicating a long term societal trend is that a little over half of US states have repealed universal motorcycle helmet laws since the mid-70s, in many cases replacing them with more specifically targeted laws intended to reduce unwarranted impact on the public, as determined by the public Link
Obviously with representative government the public decides via its representatives, unless it’s unconstitutional – which is far from the case here, in a country where the constitution by design protects individual choice over mandating public security.
I’ve ridden motorcycles a lot over 41 years (almost entirely with a helmet and leathers BTW) and flown for 12 years, plus a little as a kid, both activities without any serious injury and without any insurance claims. Doing it was a result of personal enthusiasm, avoiding injury a function of fear and self preservation. Having others judge my medical condition hasn’t so far made a useful contribution
But they still won’t allow me to drive my car without a seat belt, or ride my motorcycle without a helmet…
Yes… true. The supporting argument for that is that the NHS then wastes taxpayer money repairing the avoidably smashed up people. I guess is that if as many people did mountan climbing as do driving, they would ban that also.
But things are changing now, with diabetes set to overtake dementia… some tough decisions on political correctness coming up.
Australian evidence supporting the loosening of colour vision requirements.
Which CASA for some strange reason now want to reverse! They are leading the world in allowing CVD pilot’s to fly, and have collected 23 years of practical evidence that no accidents were caused by CVD. And yet they seem to shy away from showing it to the world, and seem determined to ground all future CVD pilots that fail a certain test.
Archie, Dont ever try to understand control freaks. Like hoarders they dont realize they have a problem. Unlike hoarders they are being paid to do something anything. And if their job description requires controlling something or someone than they will do it regardless of reason or common sense.
