Skip to main content

Main menu

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • RESOURCES
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • BJGP Life
    • eLetters
    • Librarian information
    • Alerts
    • Resilience
    • Video
    • Audio
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers
    • RCGP e-Portfolio

User menu

  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
British Journal of General Practice
Advertisement
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers
    • RCGP e-Portfolio
  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in
  • Follow bjgp on Twitter
  • Visit bjgp on Facebook
  • Blog
  • Listen to BJGP podcast
Advertisement
British Journal of General Practice

Advanced Search

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • RESOURCES
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • BJGP Life
    • eLetters
    • Librarian information
    • Alerts
    • Resilience
    • Video
    • Audio
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
The Back Pages

Roy Meadow: the GMC's shame

Mike Fitzpatrick
British Journal of General Practice 2005; 55 (517): 647.
Mike Fitzpatrick
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF
Loading

At the beginning of July, Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, argued trenchantly that the retired paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, then facing charges of serious professional misconduct before the General Medical Council, ‘should not be found guilty’.1 Dr Horton further insisted that ‘his referral to the GMC should never have taken place’. Yet by the end of the month, Professor Meadow had been found guilty and was struck off the medical register. I share Horton's concern that Meadow has become a scapegoat for a series of high-profile failures of the criminal justice system.2-4

It is true that, as a prominent advocate of the concept of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy and of the notion that many cases of sudden infant death are in fact homicide, Meadow has done much to foster the prevailing obsession with all forms of child abuse and the popular prejudice that these occur much more frequently than was previously believed.

It is also true that, in the case of Sally Clark (who was convicted of killing her two children and subsequently released after a second appeal), Meadow gave statistical evidence that was inaccurate and misleading — this was the main charge before the GMC. However, it is clear that this evidence played little part in either the original conviction or the first appeal; in the second appeal, it came under criticism on legal rather than medical grounds. It is unfair and unjust to penalise one of the expert witnesses for the failure of the judicial process.

The decision to strike Meadow off the medical register is a blow to the burgeoning world of child protection, of which he was a leading patron. It reflects the impact of a backlash against the tendency to pursue allegations of abuse beyond the limits of scientific evidence — particularly when this brings middle class families within the criminal justice system. Yet, as in the case of the child sexual abuse scandal in Cleveland in the late 1980s, when the leading paediatrician and social worker involved were scapegoated for their excessive zeal, the backlash against Meadow is likely to leave unchallenged the misanthropic assumptions of the child protection system. Thus, despite the personal humiliation of Meadow, parents and other carers will still face unjustified suspicions — and convictions — while some children will continue to be abused — and even murdered — by their parents.

The GMC's decision against Meadow reflects its desperation, in the aftermath of Harold Shipman, Alder Hey, Bristol and other unsavoury cases, to appear before the government and the court of public opinion to be taking a tough line on deviant doctors. According to Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, the problem with the GMC is that its culture of putting ‘fairness to doctors ahead of patient protection’ is wrong.5 Despite his well-known affinity for ‘evidence-based’ policy, Dr Smith provides no evidence for this proposition, knowing that prejudices shared by Tony Blair and the Daily Mail are exempted from this requirement. All the GMC's concessions, from boosting lay representation to proposals for appraisal and revalidation, have failed to satisfy those whose real aim is to end the autonomy of the medical profession. The GMC now believes that its survival depends on offering up some prestigious scalps — and they don't come more prestigious than that of the founding president of the Royal College of Paediatricians.

The persecution of Meadow is not only an injustice to him and an offence to the medical profession: it is a disservice to the public. Whatever the defects of the system of self-regulation presided over by the GMC since 1858, it has, in general, served both doctors and their patients well. The principle of self-regulation asserts that professionals must satisfy higher standards than can be maintained by market forces, or by the judgement of laymen — particularly by the sort of ministerial toadies and cronies who are now appointed to the GMC.

  • © British Journal of General Practice, 2005.

REFERENCES

  1. ↵
    1. Horton R
    (2005) In defence of Roy Meadow. Lancet 366:3–5.
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
  2. ↵
    1. Fitzpatrick M
    (2004) Cot deaths: tragedy, suspicion and murder. Br J Gen Pract 54:225.
    OpenUrlFREE Full Text
    1. Fitzpatrick M
    The cot death controversy. Spiked-online. 10 February 2004; http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA3D8.htm (accessed 18 Jul 2005).
  3. ↵
    1. Fitzpatrick M
    Society's unhealthy obsession with abuse. Spiked-online. 27 June 2005. http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAC20.htm (accessed 18 Jul 2005).
  4. ↵
    1. Smith R
    (2005) The GMC: expediency before principle. BMJ 330:1–2.
    OpenUrlFREE Full Text
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

In this issue

British Journal of General Practice: 55 (517)
British Journal of General Practice
Vol. 55, Issue 517
August 2005
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author
Download PDF
Article Alerts
Or,
sign in or create an account with your email address
Email Article

Thank you for recommending British Journal of General Practice.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person to whom you are recommending the page knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Roy Meadow: the GMC's shame
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from British Journal of General Practice
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from British Journal of General Practice.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Roy Meadow: the GMC's shame
Mike Fitzpatrick
British Journal of General Practice 2005; 55 (517): 647.

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero

Share
Roy Meadow: the GMC's shame
Mike Fitzpatrick
British Journal of General Practice 2005; 55 (517): 647.
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Jump to section

  • Top
  • Article
    • REFERENCES
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF

More in this TOC Section

  • Who Is My Patient?
  • Working with vulnerable families in deprived areas
  • What is the collective noun for a group of patients?
Show more The Back Pages

Related Articles

Cited By...

Advertisement

BJGP Life

BJGP Open

 

@BJGPjournal's Likes on Twitter

 
 

British Journal of General Practice

NAVIGATE

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • All Issues
  • Online First
  • Authors & reviewers

RCGP

  • BJGP for RCGP members
  • BJGP Open
  • RCGP eLearning
  • InnovAiT Journal
  • Jobs and careers
  • RCGP e-Portfolio

MY ACCOUNT

  • RCGP members' login
  • Subscriber login
  • Activate subscription
  • Terms and conditions

NEWS AND UPDATES

  • About BJGP
  • Alerts
  • RSS feeds
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

AUTHORS & REVIEWERS

  • Submit an article
  • Writing for BJGP: research
  • Writing for BJGP: other sections
  • BJGP editorial process & policies
  • BJGP ethical guidelines
  • Peer review for BJGP

CUSTOMER SERVICES

  • Advertising
  • Contact subscription agent
  • Copyright
  • Librarian information

CONTRIBUTE

  • BJGP Life
  • eLetters
  • Feedback

CONTACT US

BJGP Journal Office
RCGP
30 Euston Square
London NW1 2FB
Tel: +44 (0)20 3188 7679
Email: journal@rcgp.org.uk

British Journal of General Practice is an editorially-independent publication of the Royal College of General Practitioners
© 2021 British Journal of General Practice

Print ISSN: 0960-1643
Online ISSN: 1478-5242