A sacrificial lamb

The General Medical Council's press release of 10December 1998told the waiting public of the case of the first doctor who had been suspended by the GMC because of incompetence(2January, p2). This unfortunate doctor was a general practitioner registrar in Yorkshire. Not surprisingly, as the director of postgraduate general practice education for Yorkshire, I was soon inundated by telephone calls from reporters of medical as well as non-medical newspapers. But all they wanted to know were the gory details of the case. How many patients had been harmed? Why did we take so long to act? What is the doctor's home address? Can we have a picture of him?

I was annoyed and even angry with the way that the …