@slicer
Well said Mac. I speak as a recently retired NHS surgeon and you are spot on about the utterly disproportionate and corrosive effect Shipman has had on British medicine. Shipman was basically a murderer who happened to be a GP and therefore had the means and opportunity to carry out his crimes. In fact, he was a much respected family doctor, and would almost certainly have passed his compulsory revalidations with flying colours. I fear that the same repressive attitude may spread to the airline industry as a result of this tragedy, and the knee-jerk reactions of those itching to regulate your profession.
The astonishing thing with these kinds of checks is that they seems to rarely be tested, when this is comparatively easy to do, and the results are so useful. I recall reading a story before 9/11 about a middle ranking TSA employee at SFO who decided it would be a good idea to test how well airport security was. As I recall they were concerned mostly for Lockerbie type bombs. So he started a set of well planned luggage tests that would evaluate not only SFO but several other hubs. The results were far worse than anyone expected, and so what did they do? They told the guy to stop the tests and never do anything like this ever again. It is all a little reminiscent of the dark humor of one of my instructors when I once asked how he would deal with a engine failure at night in the countryside. He replied that he would head for the biggest blackest area that was vaguely into wind and fly a few knots above the stall and when he got within 100 feet he said: "I would turn on the landing lights. If there was something really big in front like a house or a barn or something,... I'd turn them off again!"