Martin to update the law to stop struck-off doctors treating seriously ill

THE Government must update the law to ensure that struck-off doctors cannot offer dubious alternative treatments to patients who are seriously ill.

Health Minister Micheál Martin is considering how patients can be best protected after meeting relatives whose loved ones suffered after undergoing an alternative treatment for cancer at the East Clinic in Killaloe, Co Clare.

Some patients who received the therapy have since died and others claim it made their condition worse.

One of the doctors who ran the clinic, American William Porter, had already been struck off the medical register in California for gross negligence and the other, Dr Paschal Carmody, has been struck off by the Irish Medical Council for professional misconduct.

Mr Martin, who spent two hours with family members in Dublin on Thursday night, now intends to consider a number of options and will be meeting with them again.

While Mr Martin believes patients have been callously treated by the two doctors and that patients need to be protected against such people offering unethical and unacceptable treatment. But Mr Martin knows making sure alternative medicine is a safe choice for those who want it will not be easy.

Bernie Gallagher of Patient Focus, whose husband JJ died of cancer, after being treated by Dr Carmody and Dr Porter, said it was easier to practise alternative medicine than it was to open a sandwich bar.

Former member of Patient Focus and now chairman of the Diabetes Federation, Dr Tony O'Sullivan, said some form of regulation was needed for private clinics like the one run by Dr Carmody and Dr Porter.

At the very least, he said, there should be minimum standards set.

Dr O'Sullivan said planned amendments to the Medical Practitioners Act were made by Patient Focus three years ago and the heads of the bill had been ready for a year.

He said it now needed to be pushed on so it could be introduced before the end of this year and not the middle of next year, as Mr Martin intended.

Another couple told Mr Martin how they found tablets, prescribed by the East Clinic, hidden around their son's bedroom after he died from cancer at the age of 15.

"This is the kind of suffering this organised fraud is imposing on people who already had very serious illnesses and are most likely to die anyway," Dr O'Sullivan said.

The Irish Medical Council's head of professional standards and the council's legal advisor, William Kennedy, said they reacted as fast as they could when they received a complaint about Dr Carmody.

The first complaint about Dr Carmody's controversial treatments was received by the council two years ago, he pointed out.

"We have had three cutting-edge inquiries, plus we have been to the High Court and the Supreme Court, all in less than two years and he has been struck off. Is there somebody who can do that quicker?" Mr Kennedy asked.

Dr Carmody was unavailable for comment yesterday.