The larger number of beds for the hospitals represents a significant growth in the level of in-patient facilities: but Carl Cobb, health reporter for the Globe and Nieman Fellow at Harvard for 1969-70, maintains that most of the difference, if not all of it, between the present 90,000 ambulatory visits and the projected 135,000 will be devoted to maintaining the present level of ambulatory care.

Although AHC spokesmen contend that new ambulatory methods are now being explored, the 50 per cent increase in ambulatory capacity may well be inadequate for the purpose of extending the current level of care.

Few physicians will disagree that medical care in the Roxbury area, despite the presence of Harvard's medical complex, has been far from satisfactory. As an illustration of regional health conditions, the infant mortality rate in Roxbury is twice to three times as great as that of the rest of the metropolitan area.

The tenants are not satisfied with the medical treatment they now receive. "Who wants another hospital?" said one tenant. "Everywhere you turn in our neighborhood, there is a hospital. But our health care just hasn't been that good at all."

AHC officials acknowledge that there are no tenant representatives on the hospital's governing board. They claim that the AHC will serve communities other than that in Roxbury. "If a man in Virginia wants to come to our hospital for health care. who's to say he can't?" said Executive Vice President Wittrup. "The problem of community representation is not even easy to state."

But Cobb says that, with respect to the "larger community." Boston's hospitals already contain more in-patient beds than the entire New England region needs. "The Affiliated has more research space in relation to delivery of service than can be justified," said Cobb.

THE ISSUES of Harvard-owned housing and the Affiliated Hospitals Center are two sides of the same story for the Roxbury tenants. In neither instance were they represented on important decision-making bo??lies when crucial decisions were made. In neither instance have they exercised any prerogatives in controlling those social forces which affect their own lives.

When tenants demanded that their homes not be demolished, and that the AHC be built only if it served the health needs of their community, they spoke for more people than themselves. It is in the interest of most people in Boston that 182 units of lowincome housing be kept on a severely tightened housing market, and that the AHC budget of $75 million be allocated in a way that can contribute to a genuine improvement of medical care for the urban population.

The tenants, and their supporters among students, faculty, and workers at the Medical School, have begun to demonstrate against the University and corporate authorities who have dealt so unfairly with them. Perhaps these demonstrations will lead to a situation in which the tenants, and others like them, succeed in gaining a measure of control over their own lives.