NICE is, at last, coming of age. At the time of its inception, I was critical. My main argument was that we already had lots of bodies telling us best treatments. Specialist societies issued guidelines, and amendments to guidelines; Royal Colleges did the same; while the Cochrane Collaboration trumped them all. I thought that NICE as the National Institute for Clinical Excellence was not needed, but NICE as the National Institute for Clinical Expedience was sorely needed. In the last year NICE has started …