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Printed in Great Britain Editorial 1
Editorial
The Guest Editorial in this issue is by Sir
Thomas Lund.
As the second Past President of the Academy
and therefore doddering rapidly to the grave
I have been given the opportunity to write
a guest Editorial for Medicine, Science and the
Law.
We in the Academy started reasonably well
With great ambitions. We have grown slowly
and rather laboriously through the efforts of a
comparatively small number of our members,
and I feel that the time has come when all of us
in the Academy should put into it more than
we have in the past.
The Constitution has been changed. No
longer are we divided into the three disciplines
of medicine, science and the law, with a section
for each.
Now the members of the Academy should
collectively, whatever their walk in life, be pre-
pared to share their expertise with others in the
same field and at the same time be enabling
the rising generation, who want to learn all
that they can about the forensic sciences, to
benefit from listening to, and meeting, the
experts in the various areas with which they
are concerned.
Among our members are men and women at
the head of their professions. They each have
a great deal to give and, dare one say it, perhaps
something to learn even now from the experi-
ences of others.
bI have always envisaged the Academy as
(eing a centre where all the greatest expert
witnesses, who are called to give evidence be-
fore the courts or to express opinions which
may even avoid court proceedings, can meet
together, can exchange experiences, can help to
train up to their standards the rising generation
of expert witnesses, can learn from the lawyers
the techniques of appearing before a court and
what the lawyers need to learn, and can teach
the lawyers what evidence they can give in the
many specialized fields of medicine and science
with which lawyers must inevitably at times
be almost completely unfamiliar.
My personal view is that, instead of the
three previous 'departmentalized' sections of
the Academy, we should create groups or
committees, call them what you will, to re-
search into, study and make recommendations
to the Council of the Academy for action,
on specific subjects which, maybe, concern
a cross-section of members of the Academy
be they doctors, scientists, lawyers or police
officers.
I have in mind study groups on crashed
aircraft, the recent type of disaster at the
Spanish caravan site, battered wives and babies
or indeed any of a hundred other subjects
of everyday occurrence with which all of us
may be involved.
The main object of this Editorial is to seek
to inspire those who have read thus far to play
an active part in the life of the Academy.
Will you suggest some subject into which a
committee or group could get its teeth? If so,
will you send it in to the Secretary-General?
Will you be prepared to chair discussions on it
and get others, whom you know, to take an
active part? Don't leave everything to the
members of the Council to attend to! Will you,
in short, put into the Academy more than you
may at present get out of it, and help to make
it a really live and worthwhile instrument of
progress in the forensic scientific field.
Yes, Sir and Madam, I mean you! Please
produce your ideas and give the Academy your
active assistance.
The next Annual General Meeting of T']he
British Academy of Forensic Sciences will be
held on Wednesday 6 June 1979 at The
Zoological Society of London, Regent's Park,
London, NW1 4RY. In accordance with article
12(i) of the Constitution, nominations for
four members of Council should be received in
writing by the Secretary-General not later than
Tuesday 27 March 1979.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/mdsclw19&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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