MARVELLOUS NEWS: Professor Sir Roy Meadow struck off

Professor Sir Roy Meadow, once Britain's most eminent paediatrician, was today found guilty of serious professional misconduct and struck off the medical register for giving misleading evidence at a murder trial.

The General Medical Council said that Professor Meadow, 72, had "abused his position as a doctor" and "seriously undermined" the position of all doctors evidence in trials by using misleading statistics in the murder trial of Sally Clark in 1999.

Mary Clark-Glass, the chairwoman of the fitness to practise panel of the GMC said Professor Meadow's errors were compounded by his importance in the field of children's health. Addressing Professor Meadow, Mrs Clark-Glass said today: "Your misguided belief in the truth of your arguments, maintained throughout the period in question, and indeed, throughout this inquiry, is both disturbing and serious. "It is because of your eminence and authority that this misleading evidence carried such great weight."

Professor Meadow was the head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and was knighted for "services to child health" in 1998. The three-week hearing that delivered its judgment today turned on statistics used by Professor Meadow at the trial of Mrs Clark, a solicitor from Cheshire, who was accused of murdering her two baby sons, Christopher and Harry. Mrs Clark was found guilty after Professor Meadow said that there was only a 1 in 73 million chance that both her children died of natural causes - a statistic that was later disputed by the original author of the research, and by the Royal Statistical Society.

In his evidence, Professor Meadow also described his much disputed "Meadow's Law" on cot deaths that "One in a family is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder". He also compared the chances of Mrs Clark's babies dying of natural causes to "winning the jackpot" and unlikely odds in horse racing.

Mrs Clark spent two years in prison, and was eventually acquitted. Although her conviction was quashed because of mistakes made in the pathologists' examination of her children, at her appeal, judges cited the highly persuasive evidence of Professor Meadow as a factor in her conviction. Professor Meadow also gave evidence in the trials of Angela Cannings and Donna Anthony, two other mothers who were convicted, and later acquitted, of murdering their children.

On Wednesday, the GMC panel ruled that Professor Meadow had misled the jury at Mrs Clark's trial, but not intentionally. Today, the panel said the consequences of his mistakes "cannot be underestimated". During the hearing Professor Meadow admitted that his use of statistics and racing analogies was "insensitive".

Today the family of those whom Professor Meadow helped convict said justice had been done. "I certainly think that he deserved to be struck off the medical register because of what he did to my daughter," said Frank Lockyer, the father of Mrs Clark, who brought the complaint against Professor Meadow that culminated in today's verdict.

More here

Theodore Dalrymple has defended Prof. Meadow but his defence amounts to no more than passing the buck as far as I can see.



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