DAILY POST OUR VIEW: The horrors of Shipman were rare.

THE 20th Century, with all its horrors of wars and tragedies, has now been revealed to have hidden the worst orgy of killing ever in Britain by a single perpetrator.

Dr Harold Shipman, a highly respected, even loved, general practitioner was for nearly a quarter of that century systematically killing his patients.

That he was a family doctor adds to our horror, for the betrayal of trust on such a massive scale heightens rather than diminishes the sheer unimaginable scale of his slaughter.

Yesterday's report merely confirms what most people have long suspected, that the 15 murders of which he was convicted were merely the tip of the iceberg.

Dame Janet Smith in her report has found, proved to her satisfaction, that there were at least another 200 victims, perhaps more.

But at this stage she is merely recounting what she has found proved, and not analysing either Shipman's motives - other than to say he was `addicted to killing' - nor what the various agencies, the police, the medical authorities, the Coroners, could have done to prevent such rapacious serial killing over so many years.

It is said that he was killing as many as 30 patients a year at one stage.

The analysis is to come later, but given that Shipman will not co-operate with the public inquiry from his prison cell, perhaps we shall never know. He was in the ideal position for a murderer.

Being able to sign the death certificates he was able to avoid the post mortem examinations that most cases of sudden death involve.

The safeguards in the system, adequate in most cases, were therefore circumvented, and the murderer's main difficulty, of safely disposing of the body, eliminated.

It was right that the inquiry be held in public, for we all needed to know exactly how he was able to get away with murder for so long and at such a scale.

It is also true, as Prime Minister Blair's spokesman said, that we should not lose faith in our doctors because of the horror of Shipman.

One rogue doctor does not make them all potential murderers but it remains to be seen whether it is within the bounds of human ingenuity to find a practical way of guaranteeing there will never be a repeat.