Abstract
It is with great pleasure that I start my term as President of the Medico-Legal Society and I would like to say how honoured I feel to take over this post. I have been asked to write a short editorial to introduce myself.
I was born during the Second World War in Surrey, and lived in England until the age of four when my father took up the post of Professor of Anatomy at Cairo University. This was the start of a peripatetic life for my parents as my father began a career through the Association of Commonwealth Universities setting up anatomy departments in new universities in the Middle East and Africa developing teaching to primary FRCS level, training local successors, and moving on. I went to primary schools in Cairo and Baghdad until I returned to boarding school in Staffordshire where I remained until I went to University.
My first degree was in dental surgery which I studied at Guy’s Hospital Dental School. It was there that I first became interested in forensic medicine after meeting Professor Keith Simpson, a distinguished member and past president of this Society. I became his mortuary student assistant. I became interested in the possibility of using dental identification in mass disasters. In the 1960s we had no DNA database, and I developed systems to record and classify large numbers of dentitions. In 1967 I was asked to assist at the Stockport air disaster, and I was very pleased that the majority of identifications of the badly burnt victims were dental identifications. The coroner accepted my findings. Subsequently I attended accidents of British registered aeroplanes all around the world, and wrote a series of papers on forensic dentistry.
As a result of this work I got to know Professor Francis Camps at the London Hospital. He invited me to join his department as a lecturer, and to study medicine there. My initial intention was to work in forensic pathology, but I soon discovered that I prefer my patients to be alive.
During my student years I met and married my wife Hilary, then a medical student at the London Hospital. In 1975 we decided to spend some time working overseas. We got posts with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. With two young children we got posts in the Cayman Islands. From there we had three years in Swaziland, and then in 1980 to the Falkland Islands.
Between us we could cope with most aspects of medicine, surgery and obstetrics, and we were happy to work in remote locations. We learnt much from and on our travels and we remember many of our unusual patients with affection and admiration. Our travels ended after a very unpleasant time in the Falklands War when we decided that our children, by then three of them, would benefit from a rather less exciting life. We also felt that it was time to be closer to our four ageing parents.
I began work as a general practitioner in South East London in an interesting multi-ethnic and multi-cultural community. I remained in that practice until government bureaucracy prompted my retirement from general practice in 1999. I wanted to interact with patients and not with paperwork. I went back to my earlier interest in forensic medicine and became a police surgeon in South East London. I really enjoyed the work and was stimulated to study and obtain the relevant qualifications. Over the years I have expanded my expertise and now practice mainly as an expert witness in the fields of interpretation of injuries, rape and child abuse. I see a surprising number of bite marks among my cases.
On the home front Hilary completed her training as a paediatrician and became a consultant community paediatrician. The three children grew up, developed their own careers and produced six grandchildren.
I joined the Medico-Legal Society in 1970 and would like to thank all those members who have given me such consistent encouragement and good advice over the years. As a society we have a unique opportunity to foster cooperation and understanding between the law and medicine, with the joint aim of seeing fairness and justice prevail. One of my main concerns is that many of us in the society are getting old and I would really like to see younger doctors and lawyers joining us. Any ideas for promoting this would be much appreciated.
I aim to do my best for the society during my time in office. Your help and any suggestions for improvement will be welcomed.
Daniel Haines, September 2016.