The impulse for human experimentation is not restricted to psychiatrists. Here we have a case from Britain involving a pediatrician. We also note that a child psychiatrist is being sued for giving false evidence in the matter. From the IC Wales website
A banned paediatrician whose evidence helped convict Sion Jenkins will next week face an investigation into allegations that he carried out secret experiments on children. [Ed. note - Sion Jenkins was later found fully innocent]
Professor David Southall gave evidence at the former deputy headmaster’s trial nine years ago in which he was found guilty of murdering 13-year-old foster daughter Billie-Jo in 1998.
Mr Jenkins, 50, whose parents live in Aberystwyth, was acquitted of the crime in 2005 after spending six years in jail. He was retried twice but a jury failed to reach a verdict on both occasions.
Next Monday, Prof Southall faces a full General Medical Council probe into experiments he is alleged to have carried out on children.
The month-long investigation will inquire into allegations that Prof Southall, who denies any wrongdoing, acted in a way which was inappropriate and added to the distress of a bereaved person. He is also accused of abusing his professional position in relation to a report he was instructed to prepare by a local authority in relation to the care proceedings of a child.
It is further alleged that Prof Southall kept secret medical records on children.
In the 1980s and 1990s, under the aegis of Dr Southall, thousands of sick children were given breathing tests – called ‘sleep studies’.
The experiments, authorised by hospital ethics committees, were carried out despite the doubts of worried parents.
It is alleged that some of the tiny babies were forced to breathe poisonous gases and deprived of oxygen. The results of these tests were then said to have been stored by the paediatrician in 4,500 files.
The Attorney General now wants to see the files to see if they were produced at court hearings in which parents were accused of child abuse.
Last November, one Swansea mother told a GMC hearing that the paediatrician, who was accused of tampering with her child’s hospital records, treated her son like a ‘lab rat’.
The GMC probe comes as South Wales Police investigate an allegation of assault concerning Prof Southall involving a child being treated within the University Hospital Wales in the Heath, Cardiff, in 1991.
Sources close to Mr Jenkins say the former deputy head will be watching next week’s probe with interest after making an independent complaint against Prof Southall to the GMC.
Mr Jenkins has also lodged a formal complaint against Dr Arnon Bentovim, a child psychiatrist whose evidence at his original trial in 1998 helped to secure his conviction.
Earlier this year Mr Jenkins said: “I have decided to take this action because I believe that Prof Southall and Dr Bentovim must answer for their false evidence.
“Together, these two men paved the way for the destruction of my family and my wrongful conviction, and also allowed the murderer of Billie-Jo to remain at liberty.”
At the time Mr Jenkins’ solicitor Frances Swaine said: “It is absolutely essential that any doctor who provides evidence in the prosecution of a murder suspect should do so with the highest possible regard for his professional conduct.
“Failure to do so – as we have seen in a number of cases in recent years – may lead directly to serious injustice”.
Prof Southall was banned from child-protection work by the GMC in 2004 for his ‘high-handed intervention’ in the case of solicitor Sally Clark, who was jailed in 1999 for murdering her two baby sons.
He accused Mrs Clark’s husband Stephen of killing the children after watching a Channel 4 Dispatches show about the case. Mrs Clark was freed on appeal in 2003 and died in March this year. In July, Prof Southall’s ban was extended for a year by a medical fitness to practice panel.
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