Stance is worst type of spin

doi:10.1136/bmj.39317.635579.BE

BMJ 2007;335:465 (8 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.39317.635579.BE

Letters

Unholy trinity

Stance is worst type of spin

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

I am not alone in my surprise at seeing Delamothe join Dearloveon the moral low ground to support his position on the publicand professional impacts of Bristol, Alder Hey, and Shipman.¹Above the shuffling of closing medical ranks I can catch thewords of Hampton's 1983 editorial on the end of clinical freedom,"at best a cloak for ignorance, at worst an excuse for quackery."²

Dearlove demands evidence, as if an opiate. Lack of evidenceof effect is not the same as evidence of lack of effect. TheDepartment of Health's MORI polls, whose responses are likelyto be driven largely by recent direct medical contact, showthat 14-17% of patients have reservations or negative opinionsabout the competence of doctors.³ ⁴ ⁵ In the British socialattitudes surveys 16% of respondents expressed dissatisfactionwith general practice and more with the NHS generally (www.data-archive.ac.uk/findingData/bsaTitles.asp).After Alder Hey, Cancer . . . [Full text of this article]