Libel law is being used to gag doctors from raising concerns about patient safety and to suppress research being published by medical journals.
That’s the view of campaigners who are trying to reform the UK libel laws, following concern over several high profile libel suits in the medical arena.
Peter Wilmshurst, a consultant cardiologist at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, is being sued by an American company, NMT Medical, after he criticised research into a medical device they make called Starflex.
Simon Singh, a science writer is being sued by the British Chiropractic Association for describing some of their treatments as “bogus”.
Another victim is Henrik Thomsen, a Danish academic and radiologist who voiced concerns at a conference in Oxford about the contrast agent Omniscan, a product used to enhance images produced by MRI scans. The manufacturer GE Healthcare launched a libel suit after Thomsen, who is director of the department of diagnostic sciences at the University of Copenhagen, claimed kidney patients treated at his hospital developed a disorder called nephrogenic systematic fibrosis after undergoing routine scans.
Medical editors from the BMJ, BioMed Central and Wiley-Blackwell have also joined the campaign because they say they have been forced to reject some research papers for fear of being sued.
Scientists, broadcasters and human right activists are supporting the Libel Reform Coalition which has produced a report calling for cap on legal costs and damages and stronger public interest defences to libel.
A petition urging reform of libel laws was launched in December and has already attracted nearly 20,000 signatures.
Wilmshurst is fighting his case to establish his right to freedom of speech. “Libel laws are used to silence people but I can’t back down because I have an ethical responsibility not to say I am wrong because I am a doctor and this is research and it affects patients,” he said.
Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at Exeter University, said the libel case against his friend and colleague Simon Singh highlighted how rich organisiatons could suppress the truth in healthcare. “That’s why I have been quoted as saying libel law can kill,” he said.
Ernst, who has spent 17 years criticising chiropractors, said since the libel suit had been launched against Singh more than dozen of his articles submitted for publication in scientific journals had been rejected. “The papers have been scrutinised by lawyers and now I am not allowed to say what I wanted to say any more.”
A spokeswoman for the campaign group Sense About Science, a partner in the Libel Reform Campaign, said: “These threats of libel action are an enormous silent menace. The chilling effect of this threat is making doctors and science writers edit and censor themselves.”
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Tags: Libel
The scale of this problem is underestimated, because of the degree of self-censorship resulting from the fear of the cost of legal procedings and the time and effort needed to prepare for a case. A big company just needs to sue one person, and many others are silenced. The threat can come from anywhere in the world, as foreign companies or individuals flock to Britain to take advantage of our uniquely unfair libel laws. It will be difficult to change the system as lawers gain so much from the current system.
There can be no doubt that scientific debate, or even investigation of claims of effectiveness of commercial products, should not be restricted by fear of prosecutuion under libel laws.
However, there is a world of difference between producing evidence to refute a claim about a medical procedure (or the efficacy of a product) and using derogatory (defamatory?) terms, such as ‘bogus’, quoted above, which accuse the person (or company) of making a false or fraudulent claim. As we all know in medicine, sometimes the ‘evidence’ for some procedures may fall into the Scottish legal category of ‘not proven’!