Nursebot

I'm sorry, but I just can't let your May 30 article about CMU's new medical robotics center pass without comment. I have been a nurse for 20 years, and I have to tell you, when I read about CMU's oddly shaped, car battery-equipped, camera-eyed, 4-foot ''nurse'' named Pearl, I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or blow a gasket.

I think what was most insulting - if I had to choose just one thing - is that this thing's creator named a gadget whose ultimate function is to keep track of elderly patients' medicines and alert doctors to emergencies a nurse .

As if that is the sum total of what a nurse is and does in this day and age!

How about spending some of money spent on ''Pearl'' toward educating, recruiting and retaining more real live nurses during this time of critical shortages, which are causing the few good, caring nurses who remain to burn out and leave the profession entirely•

Or better yet, how about creating a ''doctorbot''• His function could be to do a barrage of unnecessary testing, make patients wait weeks or months for treatment, and then bill them exorbitantly.