Medical jobs under threat

Doctors today condemned " devastating" plans by a leading London medical school to axe academics. The British Medical Association is furious at the cost-cutting drive by Imperial College and warned that academic medicine is "in crisis".

But Imperial said that redundancies may be the only way to save its neuroscience and mental health and medicine divisions which ran up combined losses of ?1.3 million last year.

The departments could lose up to 34 staff. The university said they were only "potentially at risk" and it would look for voluntary redundancies.

The BMA warned that if people were put off becoming medical academics, there would be no one to teach tomorrow's doctors.