It would seem that there are some who, lacking any qualification beyond a keyboard at their fingertips, would like to dictate to the FAA and to the aviation medical profession how to do their jobs. A doctor who provides a Class 1 medical is performing a rip-off because it wasn't strenuous enough, wasn't exhaustive enough, wasn't (fill in your favorite bull **** adjective) enough, when those keyboard commandos have neither the authority, nor the training, nor the understanding, nor the liability, nor the legal duty (okay, "liability" is a buzzword for legal duty, but it's more of a mouthful if they're split in two), to sign off a medical certificate. These geniuii (multiple genius's) want do do the AME's job for them, and then the FAAs after that.

The physician, who is acting as an authorized agent of the Administrator in making the medical evaluation of one's fitness, is charged with making the determination. Not joe blow, not al, the wonder-pilot, but Mr. AME. Let them do their job. If the AME feels that the pilot is fit and falls within the guidelines, so be it. The AME isn't certifying one to climb Mt. Everest, or to run a four-minute mile, or even medically qualifying him or her to be the world tostada-eating champion four years in a row. Just to sit in a seat and push or pull a few buttons and survive. That's about it. Can the person do their job as a pilot and be expected to do it within the scope of what's encountered, or anticipated to be encountered, during the course of the job during the course of the medical certificate. Can the AME put his name, and practice and authority on the line by signing that pilot off, and fulfill the scope of his duties representing the FAA Administrator? Then be blessed young jedi, and go forth and jerk the gear and swing the prop or fan. You are authorized. That's it.

Don't make it more-harder than it's gotta be. When we preflight an airplane, we're looking for a reason that it can't go. If we don't find one, then we wave our paws in the sign of the holy fuel truck and the airplane has our blessing. When we inspect an airplane as mechanics, we look for things that ground the airplane, things that are not airworthy, and we make note of them and fix them before the airplane maybe pronounced free of evil and rats, and send it on its merry way. The AME does the same when looking us over, and in absence of one's head sewn to one's kneecap or a heart beat that sounds like a drunken drum solo, or an infected molar leaking out our rectum, then we're released to soar with the eagles and hopefully return to fork over another two hundred bucks to the waiting AME. This doesn't mean the inspection isn't thorough, or adequate, but it's left to the judgement of the guy who went to medical school to make that call, not Pilot Chuck Yeagerite. By convention and by law, that's the way it is, and it doesn't represent corruption, nor a wild-assed guess about the majority of pilots falsifying their data, nor even folks trying or managing to "get away with it." It's a doctor doing his job, a simple exam to determine that the applicant meets the medical standards set forth by the Administrator. That's it.

Don't try to make it more than it is.