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27 Med. Sci. & L. 1 (1987)

handle is hein.journals/mdsclw27 and id is 1 raw text is: Med. Sci. Law (1987) Vol. 27, No. 1 Printed in Great Britain Editorial PROFESSOR J. M. CAMERON Editor, Medicine, Science and the Law The sudden tragic death of Professor H. R. M. Johnson (Obituary p. 72) has robbed the London scene of yet another medico-legist. He was one of the leading exponents of his art and an ardent believer in his specialty. At this moment in time neither London, British nor International legal medicine can afford this loss. Surely it is time for our political masters to realise that in a very short period of time, retirement or death will deplete the number of full-time trained academic forensic pathologists to a dangerously low level. There will undoubtedly be such a paucity of reliable forensic experts that a medico- legal service will be impossible to maintain. It is almost 35 years since Professor John Glaister Jnr drew attention to this situation, but as usual no one believed it could happen in London. To those in the specialty the situation in respect of the availability and quality of medico-legal experts gives far greater cause for anxiety than is appreciated, for properly trained experts are rapidly diminishing and so are the future prospects of the postgraduate training. In a new publication by two members of the Academy namely Tom Sargent and Peter Hill, Criminal Trials, the Search for Truth (Fabian Research Series No. 348) attention is drawn to the increasing possibilities of forensic evidence and the apparent inability of our police and legal procedures to keep up with scientific progress. A past president of the Academy, Professor Keith Mant, in his Douglas Kerr Memorial Lecture in 1985 to the British Association of Forensic Medicine stated 'We are, after all, the servants of the court, and not of either the prosecution or the defence and we should always maintain our reputation for impartiality.' Sargent and Hill rightly or wrongly interpret Professor Mant's statement as his reflecting on the increasing fear among forensic pathologists and other non-medical scientific witnesses that they are ill used in our courts and that their role has sometimes become the opposite of what they would wish it to be. 1

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