β Scribed by R. Nagle
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Despite her traditions Scotland has not escaped the impoverishment of forensic service and personnel affecting the United Kingdom. With exciting prospects of an Elected Assembly the time is opportune for the introduction of a redesigned service offering a new medical specialty and career structure.
In its agonal state prophesied over the years (Camps, 1970;Gee, 1970) and now graphically depicted by Ferris (1 975), English forensic pathology has its epitaph, "died of deprivation and neglect" pre-empted by a northern neighbour. Incredibly within twenty miles of Edinburgh, seat of the first British chair of forensic medicine (Guthrie, 1958), "Natural Causes" without qualification is an accepted term of death certification. Standards of this order in 1975 cannot be remodelled. Replacement is urgent if this drift to the provocative nihilism of John Hume in his "Essay on Suicide" that "man's life is of no more importance to the universe than that of an oyster" is to be halted.
Objectives and emphasis in all legislation on death will relate to the times and reflect the attitudes of both the law makers and those responsible for its enforcement. How accurately are environmental influences and needs of society mirrored and served? Perhaps the very diversity of aims militates against a fundamental purpose in death certification. Can a single provision really encompass such objectives as: the legal proof of the fact of death; identification; determination of the cause of death; provision of mortality and vital statistics; disclosure of research opportunities; detection of preventable disease and other hazards; exposure of industrial dangers; exclusion of criminality and finally disposal of the dead?
Dr. William Farr, described as "a master of the methods by which arithmetic is made argumentative" and first Compiler of Abstracts in the Registrar General's office following the 1836 Act, charted the way for either a declaration
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
In 1986, a project was undertaken to determine the feasibility and cost of screening for breast cancer, using single oblique view mammography. Screening was offered to women aged between 40 and 65, on an open access basis, to those living in rural areas near Edinburgh. This article reports on: the l
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