Sir,- I read with undisguised amazement, the letter from Dr I. Storrar and most particularly the reply from your good self, concerning CPD (BDJ 2003, 195: 230). It has been my premise from the inception of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and Clinical Governance, that the whole is a baseless, expensive exercise engineered to satisfy the political correction that gushes from Whitehall and the upper echelons of the 'great and good' (sic) in our profession.

There have always been shysters in our profession, and I fear there always will be. These compulsory schemes have been instigated in an attempt to control the small minority of surgeons who pay no heed to conventional standards of ethical practice.

Your reply to Dr Storrar sums up most succinctly the naïve belief that you and your fellows hold, that CPD and Clinical Governance will rid us of the evil in our company. If you think for a split second that the shysters will do anything other than abuse the system in any of the legion of possible ways available to them, you are mistaken. Can I stress that; YOU ARE MISTAKEN.

The majority of us have been on lifetime learning since the day we graduated, with no coercion from on high. We find the whole business to be an insult to our integrity and a gross waste of precious NHS resources.

There are other ways of tackling the problem of the drill and fill for dosh brigade, and they don't involve hitting us all with the raft of nonsensical bureaucratic regulations to which you have given approval. I, and the majority of general practitioners, gave no such approval and will not do so in the future.

Of course this letter is much too honest and close to the truth for you to publish in the BDJ, but it makes me feel a deal better for voicing an opinion so diametrically opposed to that held by our 'political' masters.

The editor responds: I always feel that letter writers who end their letters with a challenge to the editor to publish because their comments are so critical do so as a ploy to ensure publication, but like many other editors I find myself falling for it every time.

I would like to thank Dr Phillips for his comments, although I am not sure why he thinks that I am part of some conspiracy to foist unnecessary burdens upon his colleagues.

CPD is now a part of life for virtually all professions (dentistry was one of the last to embrace it) and demonstrates that we are serious about self-regulation.

I do appreciate that no system will ever control the people who commit fraud and carry out unethical practice, but for me that is not the main point, because I believe that CPD has much more potential for dentists who are obviously already engaged in learning, and it is in that spirit that the BDJ introduced the CPD pages. Whether Dr Phillips' letter is 'close to the truth' as he says or not I will leave for others to decide.