BMA chairman responds

EDITOR—The BMJ's rigorously exercised editorial independence is well shown, but lest Editor's choice and Smith's editorial on the General Medical Council are mistaken for BMA policy, I emphasise that these were not the BMA's views in the wake of the fifth report of the Shipman inquiry.1 2

Richard Smith, a long-term critic of the GMC, says that Dame Janet Smith finds deficiencies in the GMC's new fitness to practise procedures introduced in November 2004. Would it not be sensible to allow the new system a chance to prove itself before condemning its existence? In chapter 27 of her latest …