Disgraced GP admission prompts call for justice
Updated on 19 June 2010
As GP Howard Martin, struck off for administering excessively high doses of morphine to 18 patients, admits hastening the deaths of patients in his care, Paul Gittins, the son of one of Dr Martin's patients calls on the police to revisit his father's case. "Something definitely wasn't right," he says.
Dr Howard Martin, who was struck off by the General Medical Council yesterday for his "deliberate course of conduct" towards 18 vulnerable patients, told the Daily Telegraph he had given fatal doses of painkillers to terminally ill patients to limit their suffering.
He stressed that he had only acted out of "Christian compassion" rather than "playing God", while disclosing that in two cases he had hastened the deaths of patients without their permission.
One of those to whom he administered a final injection was his son, Paul, 31, when he was dying from cancer in May 1988.
Dr Martin was arrested in May 2004 at his practice in Newton Aycliffe, Co Durham, after relatives of an elderly cancer sufferer, Harry Gittins, raised concerns with police after his death. An examination showed high levels of diamorphine in the man's system.
He was subsequently charged with the murder of Harry Gittins, who had had oesophageal cancer, along with Frank Moss, 59, and 74-year-old Stanley Weldon. A jury at Teesside crown court acquitted him in 2005.
An inquest in March of this year found the injections given to Mr Gittins and Mr Moss were not clinically justified and contributed to their deaths.
Giving his reaction to the article in today's Daily Telegraph, Paul Gittins, Harry Gittins's son, said it was "quite frightening" and "absolutely shocking".
He asserted Dr Martin had administered diamorphine to his father just before his death, "without any evidence of what my Dad was like".
He recalled that his father had packed his bags to get ready to go to hospital, but then Dr Martin had visited him and told him he was not going to hospital. "You're my patient. I'll give you a dose of morphine to help you relax during the day," the GP had informed him.
Paul Gittins said be believed that his father's life had "definitely" been shortened, and he said there was now evidence for the police to revisit his father's case. "Today has proved something definitely wasn't right," he concluded.
The GMC hearing heard that in many of the 18 deaths it looked into between 1994 and 2004, Dr Martin's treatment was "completely unacceptable… with a real possibility of hastening the death of several".
The GMC panel chairman, Professor Brian Gomes da Costa, said: "Dr Martin's actions were indicative of an autocratic attitude, in that he seemed always to consider that he was right and rejected, or did not seek, the views of others.
"He repeatedly broke the trust to which patients are entitled. This is unjustifiable."
