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Dr. Helen Whitaker

Physician

General practice, Hollowfield, 1949 to 1984.

In March 1953 she treated a logger with lacerations to both forearms who would not say how he got them, and who asked her twice not to write it in his file.

She wrote it in his file. Then she wrote a second account, for herself, and signed and dated it, because she could not make the wounds agree with any explanation she had been given. It reached Ada Merrick's exercise book that autumn, which is how her name came to be among those invited that December.

She came to the first meeting as the Institute's loudest sceptic and said so. She had, she said, a low tolerance for people insisting on things that could not be shown, and she had no intention of making an exception for herself.

She remained a sceptic for another thirty-one years. The Institute's insistence that most reports have ordinary explanations, and that saying so is the whole point, is hers.