Dear Mr Medawar,

    In relation to your letter dated 16 November, in which you refer to my previous letter to you, dated 28 October 1999, please note the following:

    I did not confirm that the "estimate of about 1% dependence rate with benzodiazepine is incorrect", as you stated. What I actually said was that "the reference Khan (1992), which appears in page 31 is incorrect". This refers to the reference only, not to the content of the sentence, since I am not in a position to confirm or deny that figure. Further on, in my previous letter, I indicated the source of that 1% figure.

    As I have already mentioned in my previous letter, I never belonged to the Programme on Substance Abuse (PSA) and, consequently, I am not in a position to inform you to whom the document was distributed  or whom requested and got authorization to to reproduce it. As a matter of fact, I am not sure anyone could at this point in time, since as you probably know, after the restructuring undergone by WHO last year, PSA has been disestablished and its former staff were assigned to several new Departments or left the organizaiton.

    I hope this clarifies my rather limited involvement with the document of your interest.   

CLICK HERE TO READ ON

	Contents page
	What's New?