The Medical Council will today begin further inquiries into complaints against a Co Clare doctor recently struck off the medical register.
The inquiries are into complaints made by the next of kin of former patients of the Killaloe-based GP, Dr Paschal Carmody. Representatives of at least two families known to The Irish Times have been called to give evidence to these latest Medical Council inquiries.
The families' complaints relate to Dr Carmody's involvement in the provision of an alternative light therapy for the treatment of a patient with advanced cancer and the use of chelation therapy to treat a patient who suffered from angina.
The complaints were lodged some considerable time ago, well before controversy erupted in recent weeks over the range of alternative treatments which were provided by Dr Carmody at his East Clinic in Killaloe and the amounts he charged patients for those treatments.
Dr Carmody of Tinarana House, Ogonnelloe, Killaloe, was struck off the medical register in April, thereby prohibiting him from continuing to practise as a doctor, after he was found guilty of professional misconduct by the Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Committee.
The council's decision was based on a number of factors, including Dr Carmody's conviction in the District Court for the manufacture and supply of unauthorised medicines.
In addition, it took into account his treatment of deep-seated cancers with photodynamic therapy (PDT), which the council said was only effective in treating some superficial cancers; and the use of an inappropriate strategy to treat a patient with ME.
The families giving evidence to today's inquiries have met the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, to express their disquiet at how their relatives were treated by Dr Carmody and by another doctor associated with him, Dr William Porter.
Dr Porter, an unregistered doctor struck off for gross negligence in California, is now the subject of a Garda investigation following a complaint from the Medical Council about his treatment of patients with CLT, a type of photodynamic therapy.
A review of the outcomes for 48 patients treated by him with CLT in late 2002 and early 2003 found many suffered after-effects and 17 were dead within six months.
Since the families met Mr Martin, he has signed a statutory instrument to prevent unregistered doctors working in the State.