My girlfriend is an asthmatic who gets serious heyfever which sets the asthma off into steroid-requiring territory. I have seen her have nasty asthma attacks three times, and I never want to see her like that again. Asthma is deeply scary and as you say can become 'improved' in a non stable kind of way. I'm sorry that guy had to get a taxi to hospital, things like that shouldn't happen. I concur with the above commenter who advised sending a letter to some government bod. I do appreciate your blog a great deal for giving me a better idea of when and when not to hit those three 9s. Next time my girlfriend has a serious asthma attack I'm not hesitating - I did that once before and it was luck that meant she finally got control of her asthma and that it didn't deteriorate further. She needed medical treatment 18 hours later as she used up all the salbutamol she had on her and steroids were absolutely necessary to stop reoccurence of serious attacks. What would happen in the case of lack of response doesn't bear thinking about, but it should be thought about. How deeply scary.