Doctors and the dock...Philip Dodd investigates the predicament of modern medicine and the law.
Programme Details
If you've been listening to the radio or have picked up a paper in the last few days you will have noticed that medicine has the power to stir up the most violent of emotions. Just think of the case currently before the Court of Appeal. Four people convicted of killing or harming babies are challenging the expert medical evidence which dominated their trials. Or what about the case of Sir Roy Meadow, one of the country's leading experts on child abuse. The disciplinary committee of the General Medical Council is considering a charge against him of gross professional misconduct. This arises from testimony he gave leading to the conviction of a Birmingham solicitor for the murder of her two sons. Then there are the predictions about stem cell research and its potential benefits.
For most of us, it seems, doctors can only be saints or sinners. There's no in between. In Night Waves: Undercurrents this evening Philip Dodd will be asking why this is and why we appear to ask of medicine what we used to demand only of God - omniscience and omnipotence. Joining Philip to explore why we crave nothing less than absolute certainty from our doctors are Richard Horton, the editor of the profession's leading journal, The Lancet; the journalist and broadcaster, Bea Campbell, who famously locked horns with the medical establishment during the Cleveland Child Abuse controversy; Sheila McLean who is an expert on the vexed relationship between medicine and the law; and Professor John Wyatt, a paediatrician who specialises in the new born and brain injury.
Additional information:
1) Channel 4 are screening a film about Shaken Baby Syndrome at nine o'clock on Thursday 23rd of June. Its called "Who Killed My Baby" and its executive producers are Roger Graef, Clare Richards and Nina Davies. The film is directed by Juliette Murray-Topham and Clarissa Kindred.
