By James Fitzgerald My mother was a nurse in London in the 1960s, where respiratory illness was prevalent amid the industrial pollution of the day. The hospital wards would be filled with patients in tents, meticulously maintained and cleaned to avoid infection by the regimented and strict battalions of nurses. Woe betide anyone who stood up the matrons of the day. Those fearsome custodians of good practice were there to enforce rules that saved lives — or so they believed. However, that trusting medical orthodoxy of the time did not dare question the wisdom of placing patients under plastic bags, with the result that many would have died of asphyxiation, as witnessed by my mother. Noticeably absent was also an outcry and public exposure of this widespread malpractice. At some point, someone realized that the tents were killing people, and they came down quietly and suddenly, never to be mentioned…