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Following concerns that female medics face discrimination in taking up a career in surgery, is positive discrimination urgently needed for another under-represented group - left-handers? In the latest British Medical Journal, two clinical medical students at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, Jonathan Schott and Michael Puttick, have revealed the results of a survey which found that 12 per cent of senior physicians were left handed, but none of the surgeons was.

"The absence of left-handed surgeons in our study may partly be due to surgical training that usually requires trainees to assist right-handed surgeons.''