TALKING RUBBISH: If Laura Jane Filotrani (News Shopper, April 12) thinks by accepting a fee, the six young drugs trial volunteers were "asking for" gangrene in their hands and feet and a possible lifetime of damaged immunity from an underinsured company which had never made a drug before, then she is talking out of a rather different part of her anatomy than her lip. The way in which this trial was carried out seems highly open to question, as is the degree to which the seriousness of possible side effects was explained. The volunteers are the last people who should be held in any way responsible for this shambles.

Deirdre Mason
Address supplied

WHAT A MESS: Whoever came up with the bus lane for Fastrack certainly knew nothing about traffic. We now have a road leaving the town centre which seems deserted most of the time but wonderful jams in the lead-up to it. Darenth Road can now be used for the Dartford Show procession of floats, which brings the town to a standstill once a year. Oh well, roll on Lowfield Street development.

C J King, Dartford