ABSTRACT
The same general laws bind members of medical, healthcare and scientific professions as the population as a whole, but they may also be bound by additional laws and regulations specific to their area of practice. The training, qualification and registration of doctors, scientists and
related professions is of great relevance at the current time, in the light of the recognized need to ensure that evidence, both medical and scientific, that is placed before the court, is established and recognized. Fraudulent professional and ‘hired guns’ risk undermining their own professions, in addition to causing miscarriages of justice where the innocent may be convicted and the guilty acquitted. It is sometimes difficult for medical and scientific professionals to realize that their evidence is only part of a body of evidence, and that unlike in the fictional media, the solving of crimes is generally the result of meticulous painstaking and often tedious effort as part of a multi-professional team.
