Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine
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I have tried to show, using a contemporary international data set, the overall consistency in shape of curves of national birthweight distributions which reflect the biological and social characteristics of the population from which they are derived, and the effects of changes in these characteristics. For several countries, including the United States and England and Wales, the trends in recent years have been such as to shift the main distribution upwards, so that the median weight has increased. ⋯ In the short term this can be done by reducing the frequency of parental smoking, where this is a problem, and in the longer term by improving maternal health and nutrition. The shift towards higher birthweights if it persists, should make an important contribution towards the improvement of the public health of the next generation.
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Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 hospital consultants and 47 general practice patients, asking for their opinions about a proposed policy of partial access to records in one general practice. Eleven consultants were opposed to the policy, 10 were in favour and three were classified as ambivalent. ⋯ Although 81% of patients interviewed said that they should in principle be allowed to see their own records, only 51% wanted access to their own records. Fears expressed by consultants on patients' behalf are not necessarily well founded.