Man denies giving false hope to cancer patients with PDT treatment

THE MAN on trial for obtaining more than €80,000 from cancer patients and their relatives by deception told gardaí that at no time did he give false hope that photodynamic therapy treatment was a cure.

At Ennis Circuit Court yesterday, the jury heard denials made by Paschal Carmody to gardaí in a series of interviews into accusations that he misled patients over the success of PDT.

In an interview with Det Garda Philip Ryan of the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation at his home in Killaloe, Co Clare, on March 6th, 2006, Mr Carmody said: “To mislead any human being, even in the slightest way, is to me immoral, unforgivable, shows a lack of any kind of integrity and is to be deprecated to the level of its belonging.”

He said that in his 28 years of uninterrupted practice as a GP, “I did not mislead any patient in any act of care of any ailment”.

“PDT treatment was never designed by me to a stand-alone treatment. I never proposed to patients that this was a cure or that it may have a positive effect on their wellbeing.”

Mr Carmody (60), Ballycuggaran, Killaloe, denies 25 charges of obtaining €80,172 from six cancer patients and their families by deception between September 2001 and October 2002.

On the sixth day of the trial, the court heard he told Det Garda Ryan he studied medicine at NUIG between 1966 and 1972 and took up his general practice in 1976 in Killaloe before moving to the East Clinic Killaloe in 1979.

He said he practised as a GP “until my trouble started” in July 2003.

He confirmed he went before a full hearing of the Irish Medical Council in March-April 2004.

Asked what the findings of the hearing were, Mr Carmody said: “We showed a 97 per cent remission rate in terminal cancers when all other treatments had failed.” He said the only adverse finding against him by the council was in relation to his note-keeping which the council found “unusual”.