Government promotes Curtis to deputy state pathologist

NORTHERN Ireland’s assistant state pathologist Dr Michael Curtis is Ireland’s new Deputy State Pathologist.

The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform yesterday confirmed Dr Curtis starts work on November 18.

He fills the vacancy left by Dr Marie Cassidy, who has been appointed State Pathologist.

Last January, Britain’s General Medical Council declared that Dr Curtis, 49, was not at fault over an adopted Romanian boy’s postmortem examination in October 2000.

Dr Curtis had carried out two autopsies on baby David Filipache in October and November 2000.

He was accused of failing to notice multiple rib fractures during the first autopsy.

The 14-month-old boy was buried without the injuries being explained. Shortly after the first autopsy, David’s twin brother, Samuel, suffered a fractured skull.

The boys’ adoptive father, Geoffrey Briggs from Portadown, was later jailed for causing that injury.

Briggs, a former overseas missionary, has since been released but was recently questioned by police over David’s death.

Dr Curtis carried out a postmortem examination on David in October 2000, but missed up to 16 healing rib fractures.

When David’s brother was injured 13 days later, Dr Curtis requested David be exhumed for a second postmortem examination and fractures were discovered.

No clear cause of death was established, since the fractures were already healing when David died.

Dr Curtis told the GMC hearing that, even with hindsight, he stood by his finding that the cause of death could not be determined.

Although Dr Curtis admitted failure to exercise reasonable skill and competence in the first postmortem, the GMC’s professional conduct committee found the charge that he had failed to protect David’s brother was not proven.

Afterwards the father-of-three, who has conducted thousands of autopsies during his career, said he deeply regretted his failure to spot the fractures during the first postmortem but took comfort from the fact that lessons would be learned from his experience for the benefit of the public and medical profession.

Since the Filipache case it has become standard practice for paediatric pathologists to attend postmortems on babies in Britain and Northern Ireland.