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I am an expert witness, dutifully ploughing my way through the extensive Medco training "modules" , 9 in all, with a 10 question multiple choice test which has to be passed at the end of each.

The material is all relevant, some of it new, but most of it pretty old hat to the old lags like myself who have been doing this work for decades.

What I don't understand is the rationale for all this.

The unspoken accusation is that rogue doctors are acting as hired guns and writing reports legitimising whiplash symptoms which don't exist.

But that has been illegal since the Woolf reforms of 1999. Of course it is impossible to exclude completely but I see scores of reports from doctors at all levels each year and have yet to see one which is not reasonably balanced.

It is true that many of the initial reports are tick box exercises which, thanks to sophisticated software, are then converted into recognisable prose. They are compiled quickly and for modest fees, but the prognoses are rarely for more than 6 months.

Presumably the MoJ are hoping that exposure to all the scientific work done on whiplash will create a catharsis in the Expert Witness cadre, a Pauline conversion in which as one we declare the diagnosis invalid.

That would appear to be a forlorn hope.

But of course there remains the ongoing issue of whether or when George Osborne's suggestion in the Autumn Statement last year that damages for pain and suffering for whiplash were to be abolished, along with the raising of the small claims court limit on PI to £5000.

If that really goes ahead then it is difficult to see a role for Medco, lawyers or indeed medical reporters in this condition.

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