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School-aged children presenting with poor academic performance, ADHD symptomatology or abnormal behaviours warrant assessment of neglect or emotional abuse as a potential underlying cause.

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It is important that these observations are put into context: the clinical case histories, all based on real patients, were selected to prompt value judgments to estimate the value placed by the correspondents on factors such as "antisocial behaviour"-criminal behaviour and drug or alcohol misuse. The general public, unlike the clinicians, have probably not considered in depth the implications of donor shortage; furthermore, the case histories had to be brief and oversimplified. It was, in part, for this reason that we arranged for two focus groups. There are methodological concerns too. We used quota rather than random sampling; random sampling is purer but requires more respondents and more resources. The quota sampling used has been found to be robust and consistent over time.We are grateful to all those who helped by taking part in this survey. We thank Miss Jayne Folwarski, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, for facilitating the study and Mr Brian Gosschalk, managing director, MORI, for his help and support.Contributors: JN initiated the project and developed the ideas with DA and PMacM; the questionnaires were developed with AM and MS, who conducted the focus groups and analysed the findings.Funding