Three paediatricians close to the unfolding of the various inquiries into the work of two recently suspended doctors, Professor David Southall and Dr Martin Samuels, have criticised the handling of the affair and those involved in its prosecution.
In an editorial in the Archives of Disease in Childhood they have called for the establishment of an independent national panel for research integrity to adjudicate on future investigations. The editorial was posted on the journal's website last Friday, but later removed for possible changes.
The editorial was written in the wake of the reinstatement of Professor Southall to his post at North Staffordshire Hospital in Stoke on Trent after the trust found no evidence of professional misconduct or incompetence (20 October, p 885).
The authors—Dr Edmund Hey, a retired paediatrician from Newcastle on Tyne, Professor Peter Fleming of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Bristol, and Professor Jo Sibert of Llandough Hospital, Cardiff—saw most of the relevant papers for the case while providing professional advice to the Medical Defence Union and the Medical Protection Society.
"We have not been reassured by what we have seen," they wrote. They described Professor Southall and Dr Samuels as being consistently "pilloried and abused by the media."
They challenged the trust's handling of the affair, questioned the strength of the evidence for the allegations about covert video surveillance, and criticised the government's inquiry into the case. And they pointed out that the public has still not been given any explanation for the suspensions or the reinstatements, whose lack of transparency will fail to allay suspicions. The authors did not spare their paediatric colleagues.
"We believe that quite a few members of our own royal college have contributed to the current debacle," they wrote. These included the paediatric advisers, who decided on whether there was a case to answer in the first place, and in whose selection the college was involved—and the manner and rationale for their selection.
Responding to the criticisms, Professor David Hall, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics, said that he thought that the college had tried to do the best it could at the time. But he admitted that procedures could have been tighter.
"We have already taken on board the lessons of this case and are consulting with the National Clinical Assessment Authority to draw up guidelines for future investigations, and we are also working with the trust on the key issues." But he added: "There are now so many different agencies involved in complaints, it's a potential recipe for chaos."
The authors wrote that the "whole sadly botched affair" had sapped paediatricians' motivation to conduct clinical research and frightened them off child protection work. They concluded: "The real scandal of what happened at Stoke is not what it did to two senior doctors and their families, but the damage it risked doing to the flimsy net that society has constructed to protect vulnerable children from sustained cruelty over the last 20 years."