[2009 Dec pdf] SIR ROY MEADOW REMOVES HIMSELF FROM THE GENERAL MEDICAL COUNCIL REGISTER By Lisa Blakemore Brown

SIR ROY MEADOW REMOVES HIMSELF FROM THE GENERAL MEDICAL COUNCIL REGISTER

Psychologist

On 1st October 2009, Sir Roy Meadow relinquished his status as Doctor/Professor after applying to have his name removed from the UK GMC Register. To check these facts, go to the GMC website, then to Check a Doctors Registration on the right of the opening page. Sir Roy's GMC Registration details were: 0533 803. Type these in and follow the links.

The result of this action is that he can no longer work as a Doctor in the UK and can no longer work as an Expert Witness in Court cases. He can no longer use his title of Professor. In addition, and worryingly, anyone who wants to complain about his actions in their cases can no longer do so through the General Medical Council (GMC).

It is my understanding that a number of people had complaints pending at the GMC and to my certain knowledge there are cases awaiting Appeals in Court involving Sir Roy Meadow.

When I was a target of vexatious complaints at the British Psychological Society (BPS), for daring to challenge the New Labour Government re their political agendas around Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP), I was not allowed to take myself off the member's list. The BPS were determined to hang onto me as long as possible so they could throw the book at me over and over, despite winning against them each time. In fact evidence of clear mischief toward me, by ADDISS (Attention Deficit Disorder Information Services), was completely ignored. ADDISS had been provided with funding at the same time by the Department of Health and Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant who first introduced Thimerosal to the DTP vaccines. I refer to the possibility of this being linked to autism in my book Reweaving the Autistic Tapestry and provided legal contacts in the UK and the US. I also made reference to the dangers of MSBP. At the same time I took part in a Consultation exercise and highlighted, line by line, the errors contained in the Government’s Guidelines on MSBP/FII when Jacqui Smith was Health Minister. Things got really bad for me after that came out, because New Labour cannot tolerate criticism and will destroy anyone who dares to expose its failings.

The BPS pretended for years that the colleague who contacted them to tell them about ADDISS’ shocking behaviour had not made any contact at all. They even tried to deny it in the witness box with emails proving their lies set out in front of them. As they ignored crucial evidence, they were able to plough ahead with vexatious complaints treating lies as truth, insisting I could not resign in an effort to avoid them.

GMC Lack Of Accountability

Disgraced paediatrician, Sir Roy Meadow

So why has the GMC allowed Sir Roy Meadow to quietly slip away from any accountability when to my certain knowledge there are many destroyed families with profoundly serious complaints about him?

I called the GMC to ask them about this matter. They told me that Sir Roy had voluntarily relinquished his Dr status and was no longer a member of the GMC, as from the 1st October 2009, but could not tell me when he applied to remove himself. I was told that this information was "not in the public domain".

On asking how long it took from the point of a request to the final removal from the Register, I was told the average was 3 months though it could be less or it could be more.

Given the fury amongst colleagues and friends of Sir Roy when he was struck off the Register and the joy when he won his Appeal, it is astonishing that Sir Roy has now voluntarily removed himself from that same Register. See RCPCH Media Statement

One is left pondering why he would do this, when, according to his friends and colleagues, he has had a glittering career, including being President of the RCPCH (Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health) and being Knighted by Tony Blair, ex New Labour Prime Minister, in 1998. Surely he would want to take these honours with him to his grave - and also dine out on the many witty stories he used to tell about his work to his dying day?

I recall a time in late 2004 when the tragic Sally Clark and Angela Cannings cases were regularly in the Press, the world utterly shocked at what had happened to them. I was asked to speak on the BBC Today programme with John Humphrys. There was another woman in the lift at the BBC on the way up to the studio, we started to chat and she asked what I was speaking about. I said MSBP (Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy). She looked absolutely delighted and told me that she knew the "guru" who first brought this to public attention - Professor Sir Roy Meadow - and that her organisation had him as a speaker at their Annual dinner. Intrigued, I asked what she was speaking about and what was her organisation.

She said "The Sherlock Holmes Society". She was speaking about suggestions that Sherlock Holmes was gay. Of course Sherlock Holmes didn't exist. He was a fabrication, as was the underlying theory behind MSBP and indeed much of the evidence I had seen in false MSBP cases, so in fact, I thought later, it was a perfect choice of speaker and topic.

At the time though and in that lift, I was practically speechless. Surely all the suffering caused by false allegations or indeed correct ones was not reduced to a bit of fun at a social gathering whose members enjoyed living in the fantasy world of Sherlock Holmes? I asked why on earth the Sherlock Holmes Society would invite the Paediatrician Professor Meadow to such an event, and what on earth did he speak about. She said he was a very entertaining speaker and he spoke about the importance of careful detailed examination and good detective work in his work on child abuse.

Given that he was in very hot water over his entirely wrong statistical detail of there being a 73 million to 1 chance that both of Sally Clark's infants died of natural causes, meaning they died of unnatural causes, murder in fact, I found this incredible.

Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy – Cruel Miscarriages Of Justice

In my very first experience as an Expert in Court case on so called Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, with Sir Roy's colleague David Southall, I was utterly shocked by the lack of logic, the lack of careful detailed examination and the lack of good detective work. In fact I saw the opposite and a profoundly cruel miscarriage of justice followed.

I wrote a letter to the British Psychological Society to express my deep concerns that there was no robust scientific basis to MSBP and I feared if it was not investigated thoroughly, many more miscarriages of justice would follow.

Colleagues of Professor Meadow immediately wrote a letter to the BPS with the aim of discrediting me and what I had to say and the BPS did not allow me a Right of Reply. They started the first of a series of vexatious complaints at that time. A member of the adjudicating Panel had links to Dr Southall.

I was then contacted by the Editor of a Journal called The Therapist. I was told that Professor Meadow had written a lay article on MSBP in the Journal in 1996, when he became President of the RCPCH, and having read my Letter published in 1997, they asked if I would also write an article, setting out an alternative view. This was published in June 1998. See False illness in children – or simply false accusations?

In that article one can read that Professor Meadow enjoyed giving talks which shocked and no doubt excited colleagues. So why would he give this up?

Professor Meadow – Vaccine Damage Denialist

Whilst undertaking his careful detailed work in hundreds of Court cases, Professor Meadow failed to include some very important details as part of his detective work. He failed throughout his career to even mention that maybe some of the so called child abuse may in fact have been caused by vaccines, and that he had been heavily involved with the Department of Health and the commercial Joint Committee of Vaccination and Immunisation in which they routinely discussed adverse reactions to vaccines including deaths. The omission of this information is all the more disturbing when vaccines had been administered to babies whose lives had been lost and whose mothers were on trial for murder. See What killed Sally Clark’s child?, Neville Hodgkinson, The Spectator.

The vaccines in question in the Sally Clark case were the early DTP vaccines which contained the Thimerosal first introduced to vaccines by Eli Lilly back in 1928. As you will read in Neville Hodgkinson's excellent article, there was not one lawyer or Expert with enough integrity to stand up and get counted over vaccine adverse reactions. They all had to know that without the truth, Sally would most certainly go to prison, especially given Sir Roy's powerful and shocking detailed evidence and of course his status. Judges in the Family Court very much admired Sir Roy and few Experts would go against him.

Perhaps the powers that be felt that Sir Roy's job was done so encouraged him to take himself off the GMC Register quietly - or maybe Sir Roy felt that if he didn't the whole appalling mess would emerge through more complaints and knock him off it again in full public view.

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A personal account on the background for the naļve reader

Who Is Sir Roy Meadow?

Samuel Roy Meadow was born in Wigan, Lancashire in 1933. He left behind the cobbled streets, the steamy factories and Northern common sense and headed to the top at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health - and a notorious future where he joined forces with similar minded medics and Psychiatrists and a corrupt British Labour Government. Meadow ultimately destroyed multiple thousands of families, directly in Courts and indirectly through his eminence and influence on training to related professions and Government Guidance in what has become known as "child protection" but has turned into its absolute opposite. Abused children are entirely missed and non abused children are dragged screaming from innocent families, never to see them again in their lives.

Sir Roy Meadow was a British Paediatrician who is widely regarded as the person who first recognised "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy" in so called child abuse. In actual fact it was not Sir Roy who penned the term, but John Money, a Psychologist and sexologist from New Zealand, who used it a year earlier in 1975 when discussing Kasper Hauser Syndrome. See John Money, Wikipedia. His dubious theories and extraordinarily destructive interference through psychotherapy and surgery destroyed the lives of David Riemer and his brother - and how many others?

Sir Roy clearly liked the term and undoubtedly saw the advantages in its lack of scientific rigour, hysteria inducing methodology and easy application. He began to use it himself a year later.

Munchausen Syndrome is a term applied to those who fabricate their own illnesses and that term was used by the British GP father of the actress and ex-girlfriend of Beatle Paul McCartney, Jane Asher, in 1953. Dr Asher, in turn, had taken it from the fantasy stories about a Baron Von Munchausen, a fictional character who told tall tales. One of them was about how the Baron held the Royal College of Physicians aloft for months - during which time the health of the population dramatically improved. There may be lessons to be learned here...

Sexologist John Money, original inventor
of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy term

Munchausen "by Proxy", argued Money, relates to a person who fabricates illness in another.

Despite being known as a Paediatrician whose main focus was on Child Abuse, and whose Knighthood related to that, intriguingly and not publicly known, Professor Sir Roy Meadow also sat on the commercial Joint Vaccination and Immunisation Committee (JCVI) during the 1980's discussing the very things which vast numbers of parents have said happened to their children after vaccines, only to have it denied, themselves often blamed. See JCVI Minutes, 6 July 1987. This group of course has links with the Pharmaceutical industry and with so called regulatory bodies across the world.

Alongside Professor Meadow sat powerful others who are still in charge of the immunisation programme - including Elizabeth Miller and David Salisbury. Deeply worryingly, this commercial JCVI will now be dictating the vaccine programme to Ministers.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty Turned On Its Head

During the 1990's there was growing concern about the term Munchausen by Proxy being used against innocent people, with growing numbers shocked by the lack of logic which rendered them helpless in many miscarriages of justice.

Dr David Southall, currently erased
from Medical Register

As the last century breathed its dying gasps, people from various professions began to ask very serious questions about the use of the term. I for one, as a Psychologist working with children with a range of disorders especially autism and ADHD, became deeply concerned after appearing as an Expert Witness in a Court case in 1996 in which the use of the term MSBP was accepted by a British Family Court and a mother had 4 children taken from her, twins aged 11 and two younger children aged 3 and 5. The twins (who had been born very prematurely at 26 weeks gestation) had obvious learning difficulties, ADHD, Autism, Speech and Language and Motor impairments - yet the Expert for the prosecution, as it truly was, Dr David Southall, claimed there was nothing wrong with them and the mother had MSBP and had made it up. Such was the profound lack of logic woven into the training that the social workers claimed the youngest two normally developing children born on time, would also "turn out like the twins" if they stayed with their mother.

Baroness Scotland,
Miscarriage of justice

The British Attorney General, then Patricia Scotland QC, now Baroness Scotland, was the defence QC and as an intelligent clear thinking lawyer I was certain she would easily drive a coach and horses through the distortions and blatant lies and ensure a miscarriage of justice did not occur. It was not to be. She backed out of the case shortly before the trial. Months later she joined the New Labour Government with Tony Blair making her a Baroness.

I considered it my duty to find out what was going on and why on earth this fiction was being used to influence all those connected with child abuse work, many of whom were highly suggestible and had been poorly trained. The last thing we needed was Alice in Wonderland tactics when we were dealing with such profoundly important matters as the protection of children.

But I am afraid Alice in Wonderland was what I saw. The Red Queen’s “Trial first evidence later” seemed the order of the day. Innocent until proven guilty turned on its head.

I knew that the potential for these distortions of thinking to become ingrained in the culture of "child protection" and for miscarriages of justice to soar from warped seeds planted in such fertile ground, was huge. Here are just some of the reasons why:

1. The lack of scientific rigour

2. The cavalier approach to “evidence”

3. The dogmatic scaremongering tactics used by medics held in high esteem in Court - and in whispered phone calls to everyone involved to create hysteria.

4. The widespread shoddy "training" in MSBP and other potentially destructive quasi psychological theories such as Recovered Memory Syndrome

5. The political protection of those who promote such pseudo-science, to advance their own political motives, for instance, to protect the vaccine industry from litigation by blaming parents of child abuse instead of vaccine iatrogenic damage or meeting adoption targets developed under Tony Blair's punitive regime.

In that same year of 1996 Professor Roy Meadow became President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH).

Tony Blair honours Roy Meadow

After the Labour Government took over power a few months later in 1997, this thinking and training became ever more deeply embedded into the system and in 1998 Professor Meadow was knighted by that other Alice in Wonderland character, Tony Blair, ex Prime Minister of the UK.

The Sally Clark Case – Meadow Unravels

Fully protected with a Professorship and a Knighthood, Sir Roy was climbing ever greater heights. Unfortunately, this was to begin to unravel when his evidence in the case of Sally Clark led to serious complaints of professional misconduct.

Lawyer Sally Clark,
abused by the State

Sally was a lawyer and so was her husband. Her father was an ex Detective Inspector of Police. They picked on the wrong family. The result could not have been worse for both Professor Meadow and for Sally Clark. Sir Roy's evidence was very powerful and plausible - all the more so because of his eminence and his dogmatic way of presenting information in Court. Sally Clark was convicted of killing her two baby sons and sent to prison.

In the next few years as she was deteriorating in prison, her family was also targeted by Professor Southall. He accused Sally's husband of killing the children after he watched a documentary on the case before an Appeal. The family then had not one but two MSBP Professors of Paediatrics involved, each saying that murder had happened, but each one blaming different parents. Nowhere in the differential diagnosis was the possibility of adverse reactions to vaccines. The net effect was to ruin Sally Clark and after her eventual release when she won her second appeal, she was a destroyed person and died within a couple of years.

Her demise was no doubt made much worse by knowing that terrible injustices were descending on her family on the basis of omission of real evidence replaced by fantasy and profoundly cruel distortions of thinking. Being a lawyer and the daughter of a high ranking Policeman must have made things even worse as she fully believed in the British Justice system.

Complaints were made by the Clark family and to my certain knowledge their complaint was bound together with the complaint from my first case. In a sleight of hand, that family was encouraged by the GMC to sever its case from the Clark case and has disappeared from trace ever since.

On the basis of the Clark complaint, Sir Roy Meadow was struck off in 2005 by the GMC for serious professional misconduct. See Sir Roy Meadow struck off by GMC, BBC News.

There was much fury from his colleagues, old and new. Dr Fitzpatrick, for instance, who writes passionately against parents who dare to say their children developed autism after vaccines or have the temerity to seek treatment to help them, and Professor Horton, of the Lancet, who has given dubious evidence in the case against Dr Andrew Wakefield at the GMC, also about vaccines, got together to express their anger at what had happened to their colleague, Sir Roy. See Roy Meadow: the GMC's shame.

An immediate Appeal was launched and the decision was overturned in the High Court by Mr Justice Collins in 2006. See Sir Roy Meadow, the flawed witness, wins GMC appeal.

Justice Collins' decision was confirmed by the Appeal Court. In an 82-page judgment Lord Justice Auld said Sir Roy was undoubtedly guilty of "some" professional misconduct. "He relied initially on statistical figures of uncertain source and scientific value." But the judge concluded: "I could not contemplate erasure (striking off) as an appropriate penalty for his uncharacteristic honest errors in this difficult case."

However, such errors were far from uncharacteristic, and to my certain knowledge many others families have been destroyed by similar "errors" and many of these people, if they have survived, exist in a cruel silent world gagged by Family Courts, sharing the same horrific experiences as the ones in the criminal cases which have reached our front pages, including Sally Clark, Trupti Patel, Angela Cannings and Donna Anthony. See Mother cleared of murdering babies after six years in jail.

Now Sir Roy has, mysteriously, and without a single whisper in the media until now, taken himself off the Register.

Medical Mafia Machine Grinds On

Yet the Medical Mafia machine continues to grind on. Others have been brought in to take over or to stand up and get counted. The current President of the RCPCH, Dr Terence Stephenson, seems to have neatly stepped into Sir Roy's shoes. Despite not being a Paediatrician and not having any knowledge of MSBP or indeed vaccines, he appears as a witness in MSBP cases and has just written a book on Swine Flu. In one shocking case I know that all three of these medics, Sir Roy, Dr’s Southall and Stephenson have damned an innocent mother whose two baby sons also died after DTP vaccines. Dr Terence Stephenson according to his GMC Registration is a Doctor of General Internal Medicine and is not on the Specialist Register meaning that he is not a Paediatrician, yet he is the new President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and has written the most recent RCPCH Guidelines on MSBP/FII, heavily referencing Sir Roy. A glance at Pub Med also reveals that he has written no papers or peer reviewed research on MSBP.

RCPCH President Dr Stephenson –
no comment on Meadow removal

I asked the RCPCH Press Office for a quote from Dr Stephenson on Sir Roy's surprising self removal from the GMC Register but after he was contacted by their Press Office I was told to "contact the GMC".

Deeply worryingly, some have become involved with groups which have been very badly damaged by false allegations of MSBP. Conspiracy theorists might like to call this "infiltration". I leave it to the reader to decide on the basis of fact not fiction.

Dr Nigel Speight - Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy Own Goal

Retired paediatrician Dr Nigel Speight
plays fast and loose with the facts on
national news

Here is just one example. As part of the general fury about the perceived maltreatment of Professors Meadow and Southall by the GMC, in 2008 an organisation called PACA (Professionals Against Child Abuse), put forward an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons against the General Medical Council (GMC). In support of this motion Dr Nigel Speight, a retired paediatrician, went live on Radio 4 News up against Dr Finlay Scott, Chief Executive of the General Medical Council at the time. Claiming that Meadow and Southall's careers had been ruined by the GMC, Dr Speight insisted that paediatricians were being 'hunted' for their actions on child protection and that the GMC was engaging in a reckless campaign against them.

Ex-GMC Head Dr Finlay Scott,
PACA invents witch hunt

In response Dr Finlay Scott stated that far from the GMC paediatrician ‘hunting’ falsely asserted by Dr Speight, only seven out of the 10,000 complaints against doctors of all specialities received by the GMC during 2006 to 2008 concerned paediatricians connected with child protection work and that subsequent to investigation, none of these paediatricians had been referred to a GMC Hearing whatsoever. Why was Dr Nigel Speight playing fast and loose with the facts on national news?

Dr Speight's rampant public support of Meadow, Southall and Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy deeply disturbed the parents of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) children, frequently the subject of false MSBP allegations with many lives ruined because of the misunderstood nature of this most severe neurological illness now known to be connected with the XMRV retrovirus.

When Dr Speight was asked to explain himself for parents subsequent to his Radio 4 News interview, he maintained that "blue eyed parents" were "frothing at the mouth” over the work of Meadow, Southall and Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, aggressively dismissing parental concerns.

Dr Nigel Speight, long retired, was recently appointed as Patron and Medical Advisor to the 25% ME Group charity this November with Director Simon Lawrence announcing that he was certain everyone would be “delighted” by this news.

I watched a videotape of Dr Speight speaking, shown at a Sydney Australia conference I spoke at in 2004. The mother of an 18 year old who had this condition and died was full of praise for Dr Speight in her speech to the Conference - the First International Conference on False MSBP. No doubt this is how he has been accepted into the Charity - in the past he saw the distortions, the miscarriages of justice and the profound damage to falsely accused children and families and supported them. What has happened to him? He really cannot have it both ways. He says he knows both sides. But I too know that some deeply disturbed people can harm their children but we don't need dogma or MSBP to spot them. In fact it’s caused untold confusion. So why did Dr Speight stand up to be counted – whilst thousands of other medics did not - in support of MSBP theorists whilst at the same time making a name for himself as someone who knows the damage it has done? Having a dedicated Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy proponent on the board of a charity dedicated to supporting parents of children with ME, many of whom have been destroyed by allegations of MSBP is surely an own goal of gargantuan proportions.

There is clearly a lot of behind the scenes activity going on here, and we need to know what it is. One activity is a PR stunt - keep it out of the headlines - I hope this article reverses that.

The public need to be made aware of all this so they can work out for themselves what nasty hidden medico/political agenda lurks in the world of so called child protection. At the very least we owe it to the children, dead or alive.

Lisa Blakemore Brown
2 December 2009