The issue of the rights and obligations of those involved in doing research on patients who are incapable of giving their consent to treatment is a difficult one. This difficulty is reflected in the papers and discussion which form the basis of the book Consent and the Incompetent Patient: Ethics, Law and Medicine (eds. S. R. Hirsch & J. Harris) and that were the subject of the conference that led to it. Had I been in attendance, I am sure that I would have gained insights not available from the printed version on which I have had to rely. Nonetheless, I have sufficient sense of the proceedings to see where there are areas that an American view, or at least the views of one American lawyer, might be of interest.

One of the topics discussed at the recent Trainees Day of Thames Health Authority, Southern Division, was part-time training. Trainees were concerned about difficulties experienced by those wishing to train on a part-time basis.

Having been closely involved in the admission of patients into hospital under various provisions of the Mental Health Act 19831,2,3 (and its predecessor, the 1959 Act), I have made notes over the years of aspects of the 1983 Act which need to be amended in the interests of the patients, their families and the professionals who have to care for them in hospital and in the community.