out by the Health Watch group. Our concern stems from the fact that the "survey'' could seriously damage our good general hospital and prevent it trying to be better.

If the public is encouraged to lose confidence in the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital those who need the hospital will all suffer because increased flight to medical services abroad will hamper the King Edward's efforts to improve.

The way to improve medical service in Bermuda, which must be the aim of Health Watch, is to work to make what we have better.

It seems to us that the public release of this survey might have been misguided. The leaders of the Health Watch group have all had very bad experiences at the King Edward. We sympathise with that. But we must be aware that their judgment in dealing with this problem and their views on medicine in Bermuda have to be clouded by those terrible experiences. These are not and cannot be neutral people making unbiased judgments.

We think the very fact that Health Watch admits publicly that the "survey'' was not scientific or done in any experienced way is an indication that Health Watch members are not really serious about helping. Presumably because the group's leader, Mr. Edward Fisher, is a hairdresser, a third of the people answering the questionnaire were women aged 21 to 35.

If Health Watch had wanted to help the King Edward and thus help most Bermudians, it seems to us they should have conducted a major and proper survey and submitted the findings to the Bermuda Hospitals Board and the Medical Council. If their efforts produced few results that was the time to go public. Right now Health Watch is in a position of causing alarm rather than benefit.

Mr. Fisher says that forsaking the local system in favour of overseas care "is detrimental because every dollar voluntarily spent for health care services overseas, which is completely available locally, is a dollar unnecessarily lost to the betterment of the Bermuda system''. That is absolutely correct and Health Watch will have encouraged more people to fly overseas just by the release of this unscientific "sampling''.

Health Watch seems to be advocating that people should sue more for medical malpractice. It is easy to think that malpractice suits keep doctors "on their toes''. The truth is that the suits increase health costs to a staggering degree. It has been demonstrated in the United States that, to cover themselves from malpractice suits, doctors order large batteries of tests, many of them unnecessary, simply so that they cannot be sued for overlooking something. We would hate to see that happen in Bermuda.

The King Edward is a good, small general hospital. It is well served by more outstanding doctors than probably any other population of 60,000 in the world.

It is not a major medical centre and can never be expected to become one.

However, Bermudians are fortunate because they have the best medical facilities of the United States and of Canada readily available.

Yes, the King Edward makes mistakes, sometimes terrible mistakes. The best medical institutions in the world make mistakes, sometimes terrible mistakes.

Is the King Edward in bad shape? We do not think so. Does the King Edward make so many mistakes that it should be torn apart? We do not think so. We fear that could happen with misguided "surveys''.