possible to anonymise? DNA Database etc, Indie page 8

[[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ian G Batten)]

On Tue, 02 Sep 2003, David Hansen wrote:
> While I wouldn't go as far as Owen in my invective I too look on calls 
> for bigger, more remote medical "facilities" with a great deal of 
> distrust.

So had you lived in Bristol, you'd have chosen the local, inexperienced
team for your paediatric heart operation, and not the far more
experienced team (because of the higher numbers they were doing) in
Southampton?  I think Phil Hammond, hardly a knee-jerk supporter of the
status quo, did wrote an article on the success rates of cleft palete
operations, and the outcomes were far better when carried out by teams
who did little else than by general maxilo-facial surgeons.  This is
hardly surprising, but if you want to have the work done by people who
do a lot of it, you may well need to travel.  

I appreciate that from the comfort of living in B31 this is easy to say
(although I'm in B37 at the moment), as I have a national centre for
paediatric work in central Birmingham, a major regional hospital within
a gentle 45 minute walk, fifteen minute cycle or ten minute train
journey away and a major orthopaedic hospital --- which an acquaintance
from Portsmouth will be having a hip replacement at --- at the top of
the road.  But wishing that random-small-town-hospital were doing enough
major surgery to make its audit look good won't make it true.

ian