Competing interests and careers

To the Editor: Thanks for the interesting opinion pieces by Reid1 and Paterson.2 Would I be correct in assuming that they are the Reid and Paterson who were formerly health bureaucrats in New South Wales and Victoria, respectively?

May I suggest that your readers, especially those interstate and overseas, would have been better informed on the import of these articles if you had made some editorial mention of this fact? In this era of "career-hopping" between industry, government and academia, your readers, if they are to intelligently interpret an opinion piece, need to know more than merely the present position held by the author.

You rightly ask about the "competing interests" of contributors of research articles. Perhaps the writers of opinion pieces should declare their background?