possible to anonymise? DNA Database etc, Indie page 8

[[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Owen Lewis)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Adrian
> Midgley
> Sent: 01 September 2003 13:51
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: possible to anonymise? DNA Database etc, Indie page 8
>
>
> It seems reasonable to assume that on Monday 01 September 2003
> 11:11, Owen
> Lewis wrote:
>
> much which is sensible, I'd only add
>
> 1.  proportionality.
>
Yes.

> 2.  hospitals are mainly too small, actually, for them to be as
> good as we
> would like them to be at various things.  Transport has been a less
> significant limitation on how far away it is reasonable to have the
> hospital, and the compromise should be steadily tipping toward having a
> rapid transit to a hospital that has a wide range of people of sufficient
> sorts.

I know the argument and, it seems to me, it is not complete.

	-	People are the most expensive part of any business. The NHS has grown in
a way that results in it having people who staff who service staff, yea unto
the nth generation. This ball of wax needs to be undone - though it will be
over the corpses of the ancillary services unions if it were ever achieved.
I would dearly love to see a cost effectiveness study of reducing the
ancillary services and the size of units vis a vis putting capital
investment into better equipped and smaller units.

	-	When a sick lady of 84 is told she must get herself (or be ferried at
quite unnecessary expense) some 30-40 miles on a weekly basis to have her
blood sample drawn,  bureaucracy has run mad. This could be done perfectly
well in her GP's surgery down the road - if he or his nurses was allowed to
do it. Of course, were she to pay directly for this service, the question of
a such stupid 'jobs-for-the-boys' arrangement simply would not arise.

The NHS is terminally ill though it may take a long time to die. No
politician will speak the truth about its state because to articulate it
would lead to a need to do something about it and to do what may be
necessary is politically impossible at this time. The rot set in a while ago
but its stink is not yet quite offensive enough (and, besides, the carcass
still occasionally moves) to ensure that it is firmly bagged and buried.

Did you here the S of S on Today this morning? He said that all is rosy in
his garden and the any who claim otherwise are knaves or fools; only his
departmental statistics are to be trusted! He then reeled off a line of rosy
stats showing how well the department was performing under his tenure. One
of this slippery stream snagged as it washed by me. Read claimed that his
service performs a million operations every 36 hours. Really? With a
population of less than 60 million? One is left to suppose that his
statisticians classify an idle cleaner (because they most surely do not
clean) picking his nose as an 'operation'.

The state of the service is insulting. It insults the patients who suffer
its idiocies and inadequacies. It insults the clinicians who are
sufficiently dedicated to remain working within it. It insults every
taxpayer through the wastage of its funding and the inane utterings of its
Head.

Owen