"... From the cradle to the grave".

commission into silence, for it offers no recommendations on improving the maternity services-despite our perinatal mortality figures, with their alarming regional variations; despite mounting public concern that perinatal mortality reflects only a fraction of perinatal morbidity; and despite a rising murmur of anger from parents left to raise spastic children because of inadequate maternity facilities. The final impression left by the report is that little is going to change. The reader who expected "blinding revelations" is gently mocked: those who thought that the NHS needed a rebore are assured that with a little oil here and there and a tightening of the occasional nut it will purr along as smoothly as ever. Already the medicopoliticians are hiding the report behind a smokescreen of FPCs, GMSCs, HJSCs, JCCs, CCHMSs, CMCs, DMTs, DETs, and GOKs. Medical commentators are explaining the report in terms of X's evidence being better presented than Y's-as if the whole thing had been the medicopolitical equivalent of the Eurovision Song Contest. It is a great game, this business of viewing the NHS as a whole. The commission has done the job for which it was hired-Sir Harold Wilson is off the hook, and decisions are being made by a government which, whatever else it does, will ignore the advice of socialists. Meanwhile, on the shop floor miles away from Whitehall and Harley Street, exhausted and frustrated specialists head for premature obituaries by providing a service that appears-to superficial observers-"generally excellent."