WE trust our doctors with our lives. Perhaps even more preciously, we entrust them with the lives of our loved ones - there is no greater sign of trust than when a worried child takes an ailing, elderly parent to a doctor and asks him to do his best.

Harold Shipman betrayed that trust, but he cannot be allowed to destroy our trust in our family doctors.

We must take heart from the fact that he was an evil one-off. He was unique.

Of course, that is of little consolation to the relatives of his 215 victims, and it is to be hoped that they can draw some form of closure from yesterday's publication of the first stage of Dame Janet Smith's report.

The second stage of her report will look into the failings of a system which allowed Shipman to kill undetected for so long.

In some ways, just as it is impossible to legislate against all accidents, it is impossible to create a system that will catch every one-off and every unique rotten apple.

However, a glance at the worldwide list of serial killers, which now includes Shipman's name in a prominent position, shows how badly the system failed. The other killers come from remotest India, Colombian bandit territory or darkest Romania, where it is more understandable that hundreds of people can simply disappear. As often as not, they come from decades and centuries ago when records did not exist to alert the authorities to what was going on.

But Shipman is from computerised, centralised Britain, and was killing right into the high-tech 1990s. Without detection.

It is quite unbelievable that so many signs were missed by so many people.

Which is why it is right that this inquiry is being held, despite the Government's insistence otherwise, in public. Because, if people are to fully rebuild their trust in their doctors and the medical system, they need to know the full facts and the full evidence which prove that Shipman was unique, and they need to see that the recommendations are fully implemented so that they are confident that they are being protected as much as is humanly possible.