- guardian.co.uk, Sunday July 17 2005 01.32 BST
A 72-year-old doctor, knighted for his services to child health, must be wondering this weekend why he ever decided to devote his career to saving children from abuse. Sir Roy Meadow has been struck off the medical register by the General Medical Council for evidence he gave during the trial of Sally Clark, who was convicted of killing her sons, Christopher and Harry. She was later cleared and something akin to a witch-hunt began against Meadow for the way he used statistics in his role as an expert witness during her trial. Yet the need for professionals to protect the young is greater than ever. What younger doctors will want to shoulder that burden, having heard the vitriol heaped upon Meadow and his profession?
The GMC was never the right forum for hearing such a case. This body was created to regulate the profession and deal with a doctor's clinical expertise. The council's argument that he had seriously undermined the position of all doctors giving evidence in trials is disingenuous. Meadow's hearing highlights the enormous difficulties involved in being a witness in highly complex cases where giving your opinion may be treated as cast-iron fact. Meadow got the statistics badly wrong, but that doesn't mean he is unfit to practise.
What is urgently needed is a full review of the use of expert witnesses. Currently, doctors are all too often trapped by an adversarial system into presenting evidence as black or white when, in truth, it may be grey.
