Sir, - Several colleagues in the Irish Society of Gastroenterology have drawn my attention to Fintan O'Toole's recent articles on medical research and asked me to reply. Mr O'Toole's use of anecdotage and his ironic failure to research adequately his subject have caused him to miss the real story, which is the extraordinary success of Irish medical research.
In the medical disciplines dealing with gastro-intestinal diseases alone, the quality and quantity of research produced is astonishing and the subject of repeated comment and congratulation at international scientific meetings. Virtually all of this work involves collaboration between clinical doctors and laboratory-based scientists. Objective proof of this productivity was provided at the American Gastroenterological Association meeting in May last, when a paper from a group in Calgary, Canada, examining the rate of scientific paper submission and acceptance to this, the world's largest and most prestigious annual gastroenterology meeting, demonstrated that per 1,000 physicians, the rate from Ireland was three times that of the next best countries, which included the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan.
When one considers that, by the standards of most developed countries, the funding for research available in Ireland is extremely limited and the clinical workload carried by almost all consultants is above all recommended norms, it becomes clear that this research performance can be achieved only by great sacrifices of time and often money by many of the researchers.
One looks forward to an interesting series of articles, preferably written by your medical correspondent, on the extremely active and successful collaborative medical research effort in Irish hospitals, both university and general. - Yours, etc., Dr Paud O'Regan,
President,
Irish Society of Gastroenterology,
St Joseph's Hospital,
Clonmel,
Co Tipperary.