A consultant neurologist says he has been vindicated after disciplinary proceedings over allegations that his Catholic beliefs had prejudiced expert evidence he gave in court were dropped.
Patrick Pullicino, 74, who is also a Catholic priest, faced an investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC) after an academic who campaigns to promote advance decisions to refuse treatment accused him of having expressed “pro-life values” during legal proceedings.
Lawyers for the doctor said that, prior to the allegations, he had never faced a fitness to practise investigation in his 50-year medical career.
The investigation was begun over Pullicino’s role in a case that gained international attention in 2020. It involved an application to the Court of Protection for the removal of nutrition and fluids from an unnamed middle-aged Polish man, who had suffered brain damage after a heart attack.
The GMC, which regulates doctors across the UK, has now rejected the allegations and will take no action against the consultant.
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In her complaint to the GMC, Celia Kitzinger, a retired sociology professor, had said that Pullicino was “biased” because of his “pro-life values”, or “may have deliberately misdiagnosed the patient in the hope of saving his life”.
Before the Court of Protection hearing, Pullicino had told the patient’s family that he was making a faster recovery than had been expected and that further tests were needed for a confident prognosis. When cross-examined in court, the consultant cited published medical research that suggested that patients who had suffered similar brain injuries had a 50 per cent chance of recovering to the point of achieving independence within their homes.
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Kitzinger highlighted a public lecture given by Pullicino in 2019 in which he suggested that “discontinuation of food and water is a form of euthanasia”. She went on to argue that Pullicino had “allowed himself to be used as a tool of a religious campaigning group” — the Christian Legal Centre — which had supported the family of the Polish man.
Her complaint to the GMC accused the doctor of “colluding with pro-life activists to produce an outcome-driven re-diagnosis of a patient in an attempt to reverse the decision of the court to withdraw treatment”.
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Pullicino was also accused of having examined the patient without the man’s consent, or the consent of his wife or treating clinicians.
The patient, who was referred to only as RS in legal proceedings, ultimately died at the beginning of 2021.
Lawyers for Pullicino told the GMC’s investigators that he had “received an extremely urgent request to advise in an examination of an incapacitated adult patient in a life-threatening emergency. He had to make an instant decision. He took the reasonable and legally correct view that he did not need to obtain consent from anybody and instead had to act in the patient’s best interests.”
Pullicino made a reasonable assessment of the patient’s best interests and acted on it, his lawyers said, adding that there was “no suggestion that anything he said in his evidence was untrue or dishonest”.
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Reacting to the council’s decision to drop the case, Pullicino said that the complaint was “a clear discriminatory attack on the medical opinion I gave because I am a Catholic priest and believe medical professionals should do everything possible to save another human’s life”.
He said that the council “should never have allowed an investigation to proceed against me, which was so clearly targeted against and based on my religious beliefs. I am concerned that it has taken so long for me to be vindicated and cleared.”
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said that “a respected professional has had the stress and cloud of an investigation hanging over him for three years”, adding that “we need more doctors and experts who are prepared to be fearless in defending the patient’s right to life”.
The GMC has been contacted for comment.
