General Medical Council vs Dr Sarah Myhill: Dr Myhill Wins Again

In these dull, dank days of January, it’s hard to find any good news in the UK. So it is with great joy that I can report some truly excellent news: Dr Sarah Myhill has again defeated the General Medical Council (GMC) in a court action.

My good friend and colleague Dr Sarah Myhill is a truly outstanding doctor, who has devoted the last 40 years to putting patients’ wellbeing first.

“But don’t all doctors put their patients’ wellbeing first?” I hear you asking.

Well sadly not, which is precisely why she is the most prosecuted doctor in the history of the GMC. They keep trying; but how many losses (43) is enough?

Here are the outlines of the case.

The GMC exists to license doctors to practise medicine. To quote from its website:

We make sure that every doctor… has the right knowledge, skills, qualifications and experience to work across the UK. …To remain on our registers doctors… must continue to meet the professional standards we set, show that they are competent and show that they keep their knowledge and skills up to date.

The GMC is entitled to investigate doctors “where there are concerns that patient safety, or the public’s confidence in doctors, may be at risk, and take action if needed”.

It’s worth stating that the GMC has never received a single patient complaint against Dr Sarah Myhill in the whole of her 40 years of practice.

So what was the problem?

She was suspended from practising medicine in early 2023 for advocating vitamin C, vitamin D, iodine and ivermectin to treat COVID-19. There is plenty of academic evidence to support the use of these remedies and Sarah supplied the court with 35 pages of this evidence, fully referenced.

But the narrative for treating COVID-19 was all about the vaccines and the fact that there were no effective treatments available. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) Temporary Authorisation of the COVID-19 vaccines was predicated upon there being no treatment for Covid, so you can see why certain organisations might not want to know that Sarah’s prescriptions for vitamins C and D, iodine and ivermectin were ‘safe and effective’, to coin a phrase. It would jeopardise the validity of the MHRA Temporary Authorisation by making the vaccine rollout and any attempt at compulsion unethical and possibly unlawful. Furthermore, the vaccine manufacturers have been indemnified by our government for any vaccine injuries. This means that to avoid the government incurring millions in compensation claims, it’s much easier to prosecute and strike off a few doctors who are genuinely putting their patients’ wellbeing first and thereby rocking the boat.

Of course, Sarah is not the only person to have attempted to bring these and other remedies to the attention of the government of the day. Many of us were quite vocal about this during the pandemic, myself included. We were all ignored.

Interestingly, during the 2005 Shipman Enquiry, the Rt Hon Lady Justice Smith looked into the GMC prosecution of doctors and determined that the process was “not fit for purpose” and made a number of recommendations for change, echoed in the British Journal of General Practice. When asked some years later to review the changes made, she reportedly commented that “the leopard has not changed its spots”.

And it’s worth pointing out that the GMC is funded not just by doctors’ subscriptions but also by the Department of Health (i.e., taxpayers), Big Pharma and Big Food. No incentive there to put patients’ wellbeing first.

Back to Sarah’s fitness to practise hearing in 2023. Apparently, the GMC was not interested in discovering treatments that worked (i.e., putting patients’ wellbeing first). It declined to look at Sarah’s evidence and refused her permission to cross-examine ‘expert witnesses’ brought by the GMC. However, it turned out that these witnesses were not expert in treating viral respiratory infections, no doubt because this would have shown up the fact that they knew nothing about Sarah’s remedies. Meanwhile, in the words of the GMC’s Tom Kark KC: “The problem with the Myhill cases is that all the patients are better and none will give witness statements (against Sarah).”

Back to Sarah’s current case. This case involved a fit and well 84 year-old who died within three weeks of developing septicaemia, which was not detected until too late. In this, she was failed by NHS GPs and NHS consultants. Sarah supplied an evidence-based, private and confidential letter to the bereaved family, which was used without Sarah’s knowledge or consent by the coroner for his cross-examination of the offending doctors. Despite this, the coroner went on to report Sarah to the GMC for providing an ‘Expert Witness’ report. The essence of this was that Sarah appeared to be continuing to practise medicine while struck off. This looks pretty bad until you understand that the patient was not one of Sarah’s and that she was not asked to prepare a “medical report” or an “expert witness statement”, as alleged by the coroner. It was purely a private and confidential letter to the already bereaved family.

Nevertheless, of the multiple points against her, two were admitted and found proved. These were two points which were so obvious they surely did not even to be mentioned:

• That Sarah was suspended from the medical register by a Medical Practitioner’s Tribunal in 2023; and
• That Sarah knew she was suspended from the medical register.

All the allegations relating to the content of the ‘medical report/expert witness statement’ (dishonesty, failing to state that she had no licence to practise, failing to declare conflicts of interest, providing an imbalanced analysis of the facts, including comments on matters outside her expertise) were irrelevant because she had not prepared a medical report/expert witness statement for this already deceased individual.  

The judge determined that they were “not proved”, the equivalent of a ‘not guilty’ verdict and acquittal.

We all, including Sarah, expected the verdict to go against her, not because the GMC case had merit but because she was fighting a quango (the GMC) that appeared determined to use any possible excuse to silence her.

What does the verdict mean for Sarah?

She says:

I believe the reason I have been endlessly prosecuted is to prevent me from being an effective patient advocate by destroying my professional reputation. Since the early 1980s, medicine has been increasingly controlled by Big Pharma, which bankrolls doctors’ education and dictates the medical narrative for treatment protocols. This is nothing to do with patient welfare but everything about benefit to big business and big government. Quangos who should be protecting patients, such as the General Medical Council, the MHRA and NHS England, have become increasingly funded and controlled by Big Pharma, which means that medical treatments are no longer at the discretion of the individual doctor upholding the Hippocratic Oath.

No longer can doctors act in the best interests of their patient with proper informed consent. Doctors are obliged to run with ‘the narrative’ and failure to do this means referral to the GMC for prosecution and erasure from the medical register. Doctors are effectively blackmailed into reluctant obedience.

My victory is the start of pushback to re-establish confidence in the medical profession. This will be spearheaded by the UK Medical Freedom Alliance, an independent organisation comprised of doctors for doctors, to restore medical ethics, proper informed consent and patient best interests.

Established in 1858, the GMC is the oldest regulatory body in the world. If it were my patient and I its doctor, I would diagnose senile dementia. This is the only example of voluntary euthanasia I can justify.

I thoroughly recommend Sarah’s website, where she sets out her views on a wide range of ailments and treatments.

Dr Rachel Nicoll is a medical researcher, lecturer and writer. You can contact her here.