Phil Hammond is known throughout the UK as the over 50s sex symbol and all around good egg. The problem with Phil is that he appears to believe that his role as journalist is separate from his role as a doctor governed by Good Medical Practice. As the judgment in R v GMC Ex Parte Pal detailed, the role of a journalist and doctor is not separated, indeed it is intertwined. Having failed to pay attention to this, Phil has come under the scrutiny of many people. We ask ourselves why?
1. The Excellent Quackometer pointed out as follows. The entire post is in the link
here.
"What puzzles me is why some apparently rational people appear to support the College [of Medicine]. The Private Eye columnist and rather-sensible-on-most-matters doctor, Phil Hammond, chaired the conference. I asked him on twitter if he was happy to support a conference sponsored by Nelsons which make teething granules for babies that are indistinguishable from fraud - they are homeopathic and contain nothing. They dupe parents into thinking they are doing something for a distressed baby. Hammond failed to address this directly - he said placebos should be labelled as placebos. I agree, but that does not change the fact that Nelsons do not label their products as such and are therefore straightforwardly deceptive. He finished by asking me if I am coming "along to debate, like I suggested, or just letting your head explode from the side-lines."
2. He appears to be Vice President to the
Patients Association. This makes him liable for the works of the Charities Executive Committee. As everyone knows, Charities cannot challenge the government by virtue of Charity Law. All this may appear innocent to the world out there but then we observe the links the Patients Association [ with Phil Hammond have]. He also hung around the Patients Association with Sandy Macara, arch freemason an BMA head honcho. In addition,
PA has a high flying member of
Common Purpose - Helena Kennedy.
These are their
co-operate partners.
1. Virgin Healthcare.
2. Sanofi
3. Philips Respironics
4. Pfizer
5. Nutricia
6. Napp Pharmaceuticals
7. MSD
8. Medirest
9. Medical Services
10. 3M
11. Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceutical Research
12. ISS Mediclean
13. IMS Intelligence applied
14. Gruenthal
15. Care Fusion
16. Enturia
17. Denplan
18. Convatec
19. Astra Zeneca
20. Amgen
21. Abbott
22. AAH
We then observe the guidance from the General Medical Council's
Conflict of Interest section. In all Phil's written work, he makes no such declaration. Indeed, on his
website, he makes no such statement either. Of course, no one comments on this because he is afterall Phil Hammond.
3. Hammond stayed quiet while the Patients Association's statistics were shown to be -errr inaccurate?!
Channel 4 kindly did the sums for us. Of the claim made by PA, they concluded
"It is undeniable that the Patients Association have countless examples of poor care received by patients on the NHS. It is doubtless a vitally important issue. But it is interesting to note that the "over 1m" patients estimate is much larger than the actual 1,500 patients a year saying the care they had received was poor"
We again, ask Phil to refer to the General Medical Council guidance on accuracy and providing the public with accurate information.
4. Recently, Hammond has teamed up with Mr Wig Spin himself - Andrew Bousfield. Hammond and Bousfield decided to write a Whistleblower supplement. What they did not do adequately was check out the facts. They then decided to set up a lucrative website called Medical Harm. This purports to support patients but does it really do this? It is well known that the Patients Association refused to support the leading case that invented the Duty of Candour - that of Robbie Powell.
a. Hammond had failed to declare that Bousfield had been sanctioned by the Bar Standards Board. We found the judgment
here. It stated
"Andrew Bousfield between 28 October 2007 and 23 February 2008 held himself out or allowed himself to be held out as a barrister, pursuant to paragraph 201 of the Bar’s Code of Conduct, in correspondence with MJ solicitors dated 29 October 2007, undated but around 6 November 2007 and 14 November 2007, for the purposes of supplying legal services to a member of the public, namely P, without having complied with the practising requirements in paragraphs 202(a) to 202(d) of the Bar’s Code of Conduct which by virtue of its nature, degree, repetition and/or combination with the matters set out in charge 2 was so serious as to be likely to bring the Bar into disrepute"
Hammond also failed to disclose the following. Bousfield had taken his journalist mask off and put his wig back on for the case of Ian Grieve. Grieve of course, isn't seeing what is in front of him but the judges did. They threw them out of court with a £10K bill.
"The judgement said the "brief and, in our view, scandalous" involvement of Mr Bousfield corroborated the conduct of the claimant as "vexatious, scandalous or otherwise unreasonable".It added: "While the actions of Mr Bousfield are clearly open to very serious criticism, we do not accept that a claimant whose prime interest was to have a fair hearing of an unfair dismissal claim would be prepared to be caught up in the personal crusade of an outsider who seemed interested only in hijacking the proceedings for his own purpose. It seems to us more probable that the claimant was happy to be party to that crusade which, in our judgement, renders the conduct of these proceedings at best unreasonable and at worst vexatious and scandalous."
5. On the discovery of the above and the fact that Dr Hammond had hailed a allegedly bullying consultant as a whistleblower, Dr Pal packed her bags and left the Private Eye building. Her detailed account of the risk Hammond had placed her under is detailed
here. Dr Pal found Phil and his wig in toe, dealing with Dr Anders Skarsten, a man with a 5 year warning by the GMC. On discovering this, it is alleged that Hammond apologised to Dr Pal. Dr Pal apparently believes that the matter would never have arisen if the two journalists had done their job and rapidly cracked her friendship with Hammond and went off into the sunset. Most individuals have read this issue as sour grapes but there are far more important issues at play - why have the two journalists been merging conflicting data without any concern about who or what is affected. Is this what will happen with patients and trusts, patients an the doctors they have a conflict with, doctors an their employers. Is a whistleblower safe with Medical Harm?
6. According to recent rumours on Twitter, Dr Pal has accused Dr Hammond and Mr Bousfield of stealing the ideas developed in
Whistleblowing and Patient Safety to be used by Peter Bottomley MP in Parliament. We have established that Peter Bottomley has indeed listed an EDM and the recommendations are startlingly similar if not the same as Bolsin et al's paper. We are yet to hear the details of this event.
In summary, Dr Hammond is currently in company with a sanctioned barrister, is part of the same organisation as the largest Freemason in medical history and attends meetings with a leader in Common Purpose. Fascinating..... Perhaps in the public eye Phil is judged by the company he keeps.
