Consultant struck off for fraudulent claims

Malcolm Pearce, a British consultant obstetrician, was last week found guilty by the General Medical Council of serious professional misconduct after fraudulently claiming to have performed a pioneering operation (see also p 1547). The scandal also led to the resignation of his immediate superior, Professor Geoffrey Chamberlain, as president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and as editor of the college's journal.

Mr Pearce was sacked from his post as a senior obstetric consultant at St George's Hospital, London, after a hospital investigation showed that he had tampered with computer records in an attempt to create a fictitious patient. He claimed that “patient X,” a 29 year old African woman, had given birth to a healthy baby girl after he had successfullyrelocated a five week old ectopic embryo via the cervix.

Mr Pearce also claimed to have conducted a three year, double blind, randomised trial in which 191 women prone to miscarriage were …