Witness in america.

The closer the countries of the world grow together, the more sharply do some national characteristics seem to be thrown into profile. Medicine has become internationalized more rapidly than has law; but on the medico-legal borderland we cling oh so firmly to, our particular concepts as to the standards we proclaim and the way in which we seek to maintain them, the mere European who finds himself called into an American case may find himself entangled in situations for which he had not bargained. My own incidental ventures as an expert witness into the American courtroom relate to an area in which one might expect a reasonable sameness across the world, namely adverse reactions to drugs, and the proceedings to which they unhappily give rise [1]. Medicines, patterns of toxicity and drug corporations are, after all, much the same everywhere. Yet I have found myself variously delighted, disorientated or disconcerted; occasionally, I have flown home shaking my head. Like many other Europeans, I was taught to believe that litigation in matters medical was a singularly American disorder, only mildly contagious but possibly incurable once it had taken root. I have retained some distaste for it, and particularly for its disruptive effects on the practice of honest medicine, but also a healthy respect for the occasions on which it does do a degree of good. Such conclusions one might naturally draw even at a distance; but to enter the American courtroom confronts one, despite half a lifetime of exposure via Hollywood, with a novel sense of how the system at its best and worst actually functions. At its best, it is very, very good. However vehement voices in the courtroom may become, the judge excludes an aura of composure which maintains one's trust in the process. The judges before whom I have appeared have coupled an unbelievable erudition with a feeling for practical good sense, in matters ranging from advertising mores to libido, which I would not expect so consistently from the courts with which I am more familiar. "Ah, yes, Mr. Morris", murmurs the bench at the critical instant and with just a shade too much emphasis on the affirmative, and an attorney's well-rehearsed doctrine as to why acetophenitidine must have rendered his client bald promptly collapses like the bubble of irrelevances which it is, leaving him flutter in uncertainl before the·u .