contact@angliameaction.org.uk posted this to co-cure today
[if:another great letter with permission to repost]
OPEN LETTER TO THE UK GENERAL MEDICAL COUNCIL.
13 April 2010
Mr Paul Bridge
General Medical Council
3 Hardman Street
Manchester
M3 3AW
Sent: Royal Mail Recorded Delivery
Dear Mr Bridge,
URGENT - Re Complaint against Dr Sarah Myhill - Case Ref: PB/C1-314994282
I write with regard to the recent complaints against Dr Sarah Myhill: currently in private practice as a GP in Upper Weston, Llangunllo, Knighton, Powys, LD7 1SL (GMC Reg No. 2734668). I understand that Dr Myhill faces a GMC Interim Order Panel later this month. I wish to have the opportunity to attend this and any subsequent hearing regarding Dr Myhill and wish you to let me know the time, date and venue for such a hearing or hearings and what disabled facilities you have for attending members of the public. If necessary, I would be most willing to provide testimony in support of Dr Myhill and I set out below some important background facts from the point of view of an ME patient/activist that I wish you to consider.
1. I am informed that Dr Myhill faces a number of charges which the GMC have concluded may render her medical practice "a potential risk to public safety" that may be serious enough to warrant suspension of her license. I understand that some of these charges, at least, relate to Dr Myhill's advice to patients on her website regarding nutritional support/medicine but that the GMC have failed to fully particularise such complaints and thereby rendered it impossible for Dr Myhill to properly prepare her defence. Such an approach appears to be a gross breach of natural justice, is likely to bring injustice not justice, and is already bringing the GMC into serious disrepute in the eyes of the informed public.
2. Dr Myhill is a very conscientious professional and takes her responsibility for the welfare of her patients and the content of her website very seriously. Indeed, I have discussed this very issue with her myself in the past as one of the problems patient/activists like myself face is the need to steer uninformed patients away from the plethora of internet pseudo-treatments towards genuine evidence/science-based information such as that on Dr Myhill's website. Loss of her online service would deny patients a much needed science-based resource and expose them, including me, to real harm.
3. Dr Myhill is in fact a thoroughly outstanding member of the medical profession and those who unfairly criticise her would serve themselves well to see how exceptionally hard she has worked to apply careful scientific thought to her advice and practice: including submitting her work to peer-review in the scientific literature. I would draw your attention for example to her paper entitled Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and mitochondrial dysfunction (Int J Clin Exp Med (2009) 2, 1-16) as well as to some related papers (copies of all attached herewith) from Professor Martin Pall, Dr Arnold Peckerman and Professor Malcolm Hooper to name but just a few. I seriously doubt that there are many GPs that have laboured to apply anything like the level of good science and care to inform and treat their patients as Dr Myhill has: which is why she is so popular with her patients and such an outstanding credit to her profession. Dr Myhill provides all of her nutritional supplements to patients at cost and does not profit from them. If she is prevented from continuing her medical practice it will very much harm many patients, including me.
4. In spite of being correctly and exclusively listed as a neurological/biomedical disorder by the WHO (ICD-10 G93.3) ME/CFS has been the subject of much controversy. To quote Professor Anthony Komaroff of Harvard Medical School:
"...there are now over 4,000 published studies that show underlying biomedical abnormalities in patients with this illness. It's not an illness that people can simply imagine that they have and it's not a psychological illness. In my view, that debate, which has waged for 20 years, should now be over".[1]
Both patients and specialist professionals have been and continue to be highly dissatisfied with the inadequate evidence base and procedure used by NICE in developing CG53: this has already led to legal conflict [2] with more in preparation. Moreover, clear and serious vested interest in such areas has been identified with a cross-party scientific committee in Parliament recently commenting that:
"There have been numerous cases where advisors to the DWP have also had consultancy roles in medical insurance companies. Particularly the Company UNUM Provident. Given the vested interest private medical insurance companies have in ensuring CFS/ME remain classified as a psychosocial illness there is blatant conflict of interest here. The Group find this to be an area for serious concern and recommends a full investigation of this possibility by the appropriate standards body [3]".
Added to this are various adverse comments and reports from Parliament concerning the role of big pharma and the effects of powerful allied lobbyists upon medical practice and professionals. The key point here is that this is the difficult context within which Dr Myhill compassionately and courageously attempts to care for what she rightly views to be physically ill patients with her science-based nutritional support: to the chagrin of some powerful interests as informed patients clearly vote with their feet. It is in fact a widely held view that Dr Myhill has been repeatedly and maliciously referred to the GMC for reasons that have everything to do with questions of medical politics rather than professional competence. I would respectfully submit therefore that the GMC thoroughly and transparently investigate this possibility along with the motives and affiliations of colleagues who mount complaints against Dr Myhill. The GMC should not be a forum for thinly veiled politically-driven persecution of good doctors such as Dr Myhill and it should not allow itself to be used and abused in such a manner.
In conclusion, I will summarise matters for your consideration and action:
> Firstly, I wish to be given the option and provided with advance information from you to enable me to attend, and if necessary testify at impending and future GMC hearings regarding Dr Sarah Myhill.
> Secondly, you must give Dr Myhill adequate information and time to prepare her defence. Failure to do so will hinder justice and will bring the GMC into serious disrepute.
> Thirdly, Dr Myhill is a conscientious and thoroughly science-based professional and loss of her medical practice and website will bring great harm to patients, including me.
> Fourthly, Dr Myhill is at the cutting edge of international evidence-based medicine concerning mitochondrial dysfunction, she is rightfully respected as such and the treatments of her and her colleagues have been published in the peer-reviewed literature. She is an outstanding credit to genuine, inquiring and progressive evidence-based medicine and to her profession generally.
> Fifthly, to fail to investigate the possibility that repeated complaints against Dr Myhill might arise from the murky politics of vested interest would be nave in the extreme. The GMC should therefore thoroughly investigate the motives and affiliations of all complainants and guard itself against being abused in such away.
I await your early reply to this letter and its enclosures. Thank you for your attention to these matters.
Yours sincerely,
Kevin Short.
contact@angliameaction.org.uk
Encs (10).
Cc: Dr Sarah Myhill.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Professor Anthony Komaroff, Harvard Medical School: Speaking at the USA Government CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) press conference on 3 November 2006.
www.cdc.gov/media/transcripts/t061103.htm
[2] See for example the attached High Court witness statements of Dr Terry Mitchell, Dr Bruce Carruthers, Professor Malcolm Hooper, Dr Ian Gibson MP, Dr Neil Abbot and the paper entitled Inadequacy of the York (2005) Systematic Review of the CFS/ME Medical Evidence Base. Comment on Section 3 of: The diagnosis, treatment and management of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)/(ME) in adults and children, Work to support the NICE Guidelines... Anne-Marie Bagnall, et al, Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, University of York. 2005. Professor Malcolm Hooper & Horace Reid, January 2006. From:
www.meactionuk.org.uk/FINAL_on_NICE_for_Gibson.html
[3] See page 30 of the Report of the UK Gibson Group on the Scientific Research into ME (GSRME), entitled: Inquiry into the Status of CFS/ME and Research into Causes and Treatment. November 2006. At the GSRME House of Commons Website:
www.erythos.com/gibsonenquiry/index.html
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