Madam, - The Minister for Health and Children, with all due respect, is entitled to his opinion/interpretation, but even his considerable ministerial power cannot transmute American data into Irish statistics. As it happens, the infant mortality rate in the District of Columbia, US for the year 1999 was 15 per 1,000 (Paediatrics, December 2001) compared with 6 per 1,000 in Ireland in the same year (Annual Report of Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health and Children 2000). How do I interpret these figures? - Yours, etc.,
Prof DENIS G. GILL, Royal College of Surgeons, St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2.