Toxicity of vitamins: complications of a health movement.

would have on the girls at-risk as a result of the publicity the decision was bound to receive. Furthermore, the least that might have been expected in these circumstances was clear and unambiguous new guidance. What we have got is a confused and muddled statement which reads more like an abstract ethical pronouncement than a principle which is likely to have important consequences to public health. Even those who agree with the decision must admit that it is "woolly." Those less charitably inclined will suspect the GMC of obfuscation. The Children's Legal Centre has already written to the General Medical Council pointing out that the new guidance "displays a dangerous misunderstanding of what the Lords decided" and that "the publicity which it has received will already have done damage in a very sensitive area." The Brooke Advisory Centre has issued a statement that its clinics will not inform the parents, and it follows that girls at risk will be even less likely to consult their own family doctors, who are in the best position to deal with the problem. The change is said to be based on legal advice, yet there is nothing in the House of Lords' decision on the Gillick case which supports it.3 Indeed, Lord Fraser, whose judgment expressed the majority view, may have been too optimistic when he stated that "The medical profession have in modern times come to be entrusted with very widediscretionary powers going beyond the strict limits of clinical judgment, and, in my opinion there is nothing strange about entrusting them with this further responsibility, which they alone are in a position to discharge satisfactorily."3 J D J HAVARD Secretary, BMA