Hi Physiobob

I feel a need to respond twice to your last comment, mainly because that little exclamation mark at the end of your comment is bugging me ! " Does he mean....?" Whatever.

Just a thought to lighten the mood. The guidelines laid down to ensure safe practices are simply that....guidelines. They're not carved in stone, as the less enlightened might like us to believe. I'm a bit of a lapsed atheist on that one. They were laid down to set parameters for safe practice at various times when understanding of the problem was at a particularly developed stage. Wouldn't it be ironic if those same parameters restricted research into even safer practices, which our evolved understanding of the problem requires today. It may well be the case that a certain denial, of less than positive results, cloaked in euphemisms, has become the order of the day when it comes to justifying recommended therapies which have a question mark hanging over them. The ambition of the profession should always be to re-assess and improve, and if, as I sometimes suspect, the whole thing simply boils down to a 'radical change v career prospects' argument, then there is only one loser...the patient.

I'm reminded of the recent event of an Australian researcher who had an educated hunch about certain ulcers being caused by Pylori bacteria. The establishment ostracized him, but he explored his radical approach regardless, even to the point of infecting himself, getting very ill, and then taking the antibiotic remedy. He's now a Nobel Laureate, and much more importantly, 500 million people around the globe now have a remedy for their ulcers. A hero for our times, no doubt.

Now, I'm not suggesting that a researcher should somehow develop C/S and then test the therapies. But, as I've already got C/S, I reckon I'm already half way there, if this guy's example is anything to go by.

Gerry