Down's syndrome blunders, daft sex change ops in Newcastle, a vaccine damage compensation controversy, Mr Consultant Ledward finally held to account. . . I cannot remember a week when the NHS was so overwhelmed with angry - even hysterical - headlines coming from all directions. The Express had three NHSbashing lead stories in a row.
And that was before Downing Street - or was it the Department of Health? - unleashed tantalising glimpses of the dramatic changes which the government seeks to engineer within the service by way of next month's national plan for the NHS. You would have thought ministers would be suicidal. You would be wrong.
As I'm sure you know, the most dramatic headline grabber, which set the policy agenda for much of the week, was 'Blair acts to abolish NHS waiting lists' reported in The Guardian. It involved what turned out to be an NHS Confederation scheme to create new 'elective surgery centres' which would operate 'round the clock' and cut UK waiting times to six, then three months - the EU average.
One of several Confed ideas, actually. But I'm old enough (54) to remember the last time Labour had a national plan. It was launched by that remarkable undisciplined man, George Brown, in the mid-1960s, and required industry to meet agreed targets for investment and output.
It all ended in tears, which is why such well-meaning talk still makes me nervous. Labour governments now avoid micro-managing the economy. All the same, you can't help noting that Labour's urge to interfere, to redirect, to tweak, is even more powerful than Mrs Bottomley's on a frantic day. Social policy has replaced economic policy as a vehicle for high-minded planning.
David Blunkett harries schools, Gordon (no relation) Brown demands fairer admission policies at Oxbridge, and Alan Milburn. . . When I made inquiries as to how he was coping I was astonished to learn that the secretary of state is in very good heart, confident that the week's excitement had finally awoken public opinion to the scale of the government's ambition for the NHS.
Mr Milburn has partially lost his voice; too much talking on Breakfast with Frost or on the phone to Leo's dad at Chequers, where he has been reading up NHS policy papers - hence those 'Blair acts. . .' headlines and Monday's NHS 'summit', which the Tories dismissed as a gimmick.
After 18 years in Opposition and three in office, voters don't want to know what the problems are (again), they want the solutions, snapped Dr Liam Fox, Mr Hague's health spokesman.
What the NHS wants is less political interference and more - not fewer - decisions being taken by doctors, the good doctor adds.
Money is part of the solution, of course, and Chancellor Brown is providing lots of that. But, as they keep telling you, performance and accountability, Mr Ledward, are also in the frame.
Mr Milburn believes that people now realise just how bold and radical he and Mr Blair plan to be thanks to that story in The Guardian about the scope for radically re-organising elective treatment and his own 12 million NHS consultation leaflets exercise - even though the botched timetable so enraged the Daily Mail.
As for consultant Ledward's record of hyper-active butchery, surely no one comes out of it well, certainly not colleagues or managers who know such doubts existed about him for so long? All right, we know that whistle-blowing does not (did not? ) pay, as we saw in Bristol. But if you are a minister determined to break the degree of power that Nye Bevan felt forced to bequeath to consultants to get the NHS started in 1948, this is a golden opportunity to act with public opinion behind you.
This is clearly what Mr Blair - who is (being a younger son? ) notably hostile to old establishment tradition - wants Mr Milburn to do as they squeeze advantage out of the contractual negotiations. The government's current unpopularity, the argument now runs, stems from the perceived 'winter beds crisis' in the NHS. No matter that the facts were better; perception rules.
'People are still deeply attached to the NHS, but young people less than older ones - they have more profound doubts, 'Mr Milburn tells his staff. 'We have three or four years to deliver something which justifies the amounts we are spending. The stakes are high stakes.'
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