The first doctor to face the General Medical Council over the Alder Hey organ debacle was last week cleared of “inappropriate, unprofessional, and dishonest” behaviour.
Over a thousand families discovered in 1999 that their children's organs had been removed and stored by the hospital without their permission. Many conducted second and even third funerals.
Dr Andrew Selby, aged 43, a consultant paediatrician, was accused of lying to the parents of a baby boy who died at the hospital about the nature of a postmortem examination for which he asked their consent.
Owen Williams, who was born with several serious medical problems, died suddenly in the paediatric intensive care unit in January 1999. Dr Selby asked his parents, Julie Wilkinson and Nick Williams, to sign a consent form authorising a postmortem.
David Enoch, representing the GMC, told the hearing in Manchester that Dr Selby assured the parents that only an inch-long incision would be made and a “tiny sliver” of tissue removed. Later, when the organ retention scandal broke, they called a helpline set up by the trust and were told that Owen's heart had been retained.
They held a second funeral and buried a casket ostensibly containing the heart. Several weeks later, they were told that other organs had been removed. When the casket was exhumed, it was found to contain Owen's heart, brain, tongue, larynx, trachea, thyroid gland, bronchi, lungs, kidney, and liver.
The case against Dr Selby hinged on two questions—whether the consent form had been misleading and whether Dr Selby knew he was not telling the truth when he assured the family in May 1999 that “you have buried Owen whole and complete.” The second charge was dropped early in the case, as the GMC's professional conduct committee accepted that Dr Selby did not know that organs had not been returned.
After hearing evidence from Alder Hey pathologist Dr George Kokai, the committee also accepted that Dr Selby had not promised that no organs would be removed when he asked the parents to sign the consent form. Dr Kokai said the form then used did not specify what was involved in a postmortem but simply asked consent for “the removal of tissue other than for the purpose of transplantation.”
Since the Redfern inquiry into the scandal , said Dr Kokai, all postmortem consent forms included a clause that would allow postmortem examinations to be “limited.”
Earlier this month, Alder Hey Hospital and the University of Liverpool offered parents caught up in the debacle a compensation package worth about £5000 ($8000; €8000) each plus a public apology and a commemorative plaque.
Responding to Dr Selby's exoneration, consultants at the Alder Hey paediatric intensive care unit issued this statement: “We feel wholly demoralised by what our colleague Dr Selby has been through. We all supported him whole-heartedly. He is a first class consultant, and this is absolutely the right decision. He followed the standard procedures and practices for consent for postmortem which were in place at the time. We are appalled at the way such a dedicated doctor has been treated.
“This could have been any one of us—we all used the nationally accepted practices of the day. We acknowledge that these practices have now changed, but it is wrong to judge someone's actions in 1999 on new guidance.”
Of 16 Alder Hey doctors referred to the GMC by the government's chief medical officer Professor Liam Donaldson, only two have been singled out for disciplinary hearings. One was Dr Selby, the other is Dr John Martin, medical director of the hospital from 1991 until his retirement in 1997.
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LIVERPOOL ECHO
Dr Selby's colleagues complained that today's rules were being used to judge yesterday's actions