Another letter, this time from Sir Liam

In amongst the remaining letters that we read at ND Central several of us discovered a letter from the great and the good of medicine in this country the chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson. Each addressed to us by name.

Sir Liam being Chief medical honcho clearly did not go to a real medical school as the advice in the letter relates to how important he feels it is ask patients about their smoking and to tell patients to stop smoking. The little mnemonic AAA Ask Advise Act is to be “heavily promoted” although we thought triple A was something you shot at aircraft?

Clearly as a man who went to what one of the team refer to as a university for “Oxbridge rejects” he now has discovered that smoking is harmful for health and feels the need to share his newly acquired knowledge at public expense (a few tens of thousands we guess for a mass male shot to GPs) with his medical colleagues. We should even be giving patients advice on the need to stop smoking.

Granted he qualified in the early 1970s and would have been a student in the sixties when smoking of tobacco and other herbal things would have been more common but why has the Chief Medical Officer taken until now to tell us what we have known and imparted to medical students and junior doctors for years? We have even advised our patients to smoke smoking. We even refer them to Stop Smoking services. Are we doing something wrong or old fashioned?

Praise be to the Party for telling us that smoking is harmful to health while reaping the rewards from taxing it. And to a Chief Medical Officer for spending thousands to tell GPs how to suck eggs.