One of the parents who contacted the inquiry was Maxine Hanson, whose son Ben was operated on at Great Ormond Street Hospital after doctors at the Brompton had recommended he wait five years for a similar operation there. We have got our goal, which is to put the spotlight on this sort of discrimination. While, in the 1970s and early 1980s, when success rates in paediatric cardiac surgery were generally much lower, there was a genuine debate about the merits of surgery on Down's syndrome children, subsequent improvements in techniques have made the issue more clear-cut. There is no particular reason why a child with Down's syndrome and a heart defect should fare any worse either during or after a complex operation. The tide began to turn by the early 1990s.
Discrimination is more through ignorance and lack of information.
The report makes it clear that when Down's syndrome patients did receive treatment at the Brompton, it was of equal quality to that received by any other patient. The report has disappointed those who believe that, as a whole, the hospital's death rates in paediatric cardiac care were poor. A review carried out by expert Professor Stewart Hunter has found no evidence to support this. Results at the unit were as good, if not better, than at many other UK heart hospitals, he says.