26 JANUARY 2002, Page 24

Legal confusion

From Mr J. Alan Smith Sir: Robert Baker (`The wages of sex', 19 January) writes: 'There is a law in medical literature akin to the Newtonian law of thermodynamics, which is that for every claim there is an equal and opposite counterclaim,' I think he was actually alluding to Newton's Third Law of Motion: 'To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.'

J. Alan Smith

Epping, Essex