Your leader on the white paper (Comment, 11 December) is, perhaps, too generous to this government in its presumption of the continuation of the NHS as we know it.

I would refer you to an address I gave recently to Gettysburg Community trust, when I said: 'Two score years and 10 ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new service, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposal that all men are created equal in their health needs. Now we are engaged in a war, testing whether that service, so conceived and so dedicated, can endure.'

Abe Goodman,

MPA Health Strategy & Planning,

London NW1.