Latest news with #medicalscandal
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Health
- Irish Times
The Sleep Room by Jon Stock: Could an Irish version of this frightening scandal in British psychiatry yet emerge?
The Sleep Room. A Very British Medical Scandal Author : Jon Stock ISBN-13 : 978-0349128894 Publisher : Bridge Street Press Guideline Price : £25 Day and night no longer held any meaning for the inhabitants of the Sleep Room at The Royal Waterloo Hospital in London in the 1960s. They were all women, most being treated without their consent and spending weeks at a time in a state of deep sleep induced by a cocktail of antipsychotic and antidepressant medication, sedatives and electroconvulsive therapy. They were roused every six hours by nurses and taken to the bathroom, had their vital signs checked, were administered enemas, drugs and ECT, and returned to their beds. These women had one thing in common: they were all under the care of the eminent psychiatrist Dr William Sargent. Sargent was one of the most influential psychiatrists in postwar British society. He was appointed Physician in Charge of the Department of Psychological Medicine at St Thomas', one of the world's most prestigious teaching hospitals. He occupied other positions of considerable influence and impact. Sargent was lauded by many of his peers and he was a frequent contributor to the BBC and newspapers. He died in 1988. READ MORE It appears that Sargent's raison d'être was to treat mental health conditions by physical means. The brutal treatment regime at the Sleep Room was his brainchild and a manifestation of his near obsession to utilise physical interventions to treat mental distress. It is also a chilling manifestation of his unfettered power and the acquiescence of the medical establishment around him. Jon Stock in The Sleep Room captures this tyranny in a gripping manner. Stock has written several psychological thrillers; his writing here, however, is constrained in the best sense. There is a dignity and sensitivity embedded in Stock's accounts of the women's stories that make up this scandal. Several chapters explicitly focus on individual women who were often involuntary inhabitants of the Sleep Room. Each of these chapters is titled using the woman's name. The actor Celia Imrie is one; she was just 14 when she began her de facto incarceration in the Sleep Room as a 'treatment' for anorexia. Sargent offered the alluring promise of reprogramming the human mind, an offering that in the Cold War era was of immense interest to the CIA and M15. Stock goes into great detail concerning Sargent's somewhat tentative links to these organisations, describing a fascinating episode concerning a non-consensual trial of LSD as a potential 'truth drug'. However, at times I felt that this was almost a separate story and detracted somewhat from the brutal impact Sargent had on the lives of his patients. Stock reveals a frightening scandal at the heart of the British medical establishment, a scandal that crossed class divides, had international reach, appears to have been facilitated by the establishment for decades and has had the most debilitating impact on the women involved. While reading, I couldn't help wondering if Sargent's obsession with physical treatment of mental illness had reached Irish shores, and if there is a Sleep Room scandal yet to emerge here. Paul D'Alton is a clinical psychologist and associate professor of psychology at UCD
News.com.au
6 days ago
- Health
- News.com.au
Sydney plastic surgeon, Dr Tobias Pincock, blames shocking drug test result on bagels
A scandal-plagued Sydney surgeon has once again been hauled in front of medical authorities, this time after testing positive for a slew of illicit drugs. Dr Tobias Pincock, throughout his career as a plastic surgeon, has been found to have performed a nose job on a patient 45 minutes after they suffered a cardiac arrest, losing $500,000 of his patient's money after convincing them to invest in a fund he majority-owned, and now getting done for being on illicit drugs while working. Australia's medical regulator, the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC), on Tuesday released its findings from a tribunal held in late 2024, which investigated a complaint against Dr Pincock. The complaint alleged that Dr Pincock breached the conditions on his registration by 'testing positive for illicit drugs, failing to attend drug screening on a number of occasions, providing a number of dilute urine samples' and 'failing to attend for treatment and monitoring.' Due to past positive tests, Dr Pincock was required to undertake periodic as well as random drug testing, but throughout the testing, Dr Pincock tested positive for cocaine, Endone, Temazepam, Endep, quetiapine, lignocaine, oxycodone, morphine, codeine, opiates and benzodiazepines. Dr Pincock provided the tribunal with many explanations for these positive results. Urinary drug testing on 13 January 2020 and 18 May 2022 indicated Dr Pincock had self-administered an amphetamine and an opioid, respectively. Dr Pincock claimed that he had either eaten several poppy seed bagels on the day of testing or the previous day, and that this was possibly the cause of a false positive result. However, the HCCC found 'at a time after (Dr Pincock) was tested on 18 May 2022, he photographed a packet of bagels, a toaster and a knife and sent that photo to the Medical Council. 'It is clear that this photo was not taken at the time the bagels were eaten but at the time he sent the photograph to the Medical Council, and tolerably clear that the practitioner, in effect, re-set the scene from earlier by posing the bagels with the toaster etc.' In his statement to the tribunal, Dr Pincock said he had not 'intentionally acted to be in breach of his conditions', yet the tribunal found on several occasions 'that is exactly what he did'. Dr Pincock came to the notice of medical regulators in 2016 when a complaint was made which alleged that he had used nitrous oxide recreationally. During an assessment by Dr Robert Fisher, Dr Pincock allegedly admitted to self-administering nitrous oxide to manage a panic attack. This was far from Dr Pincock's first brush with medical authorities. In 2011, Dr Pincock was 'reprimanded in the strongest terms' by a medical committee for performing a nose job on a patient 45 minutes after they had suffered a cardiac arrest. The patient required resuscitation and three defibrillations yet Dr Pincock allegedly felt that the patient would be 'disappointed' if the surgery didn't happen and 'might be reluctant to try again at a later date.' In 2018, Dr Pincock was also charged with the alleged assault of a 10-year-old boy and handed an apprehended violence order to stay away from the child. In January, Dr Pincock was found guilty of professional misconduct and barred from practising medicine for 18 months after encouraging two patients to invest over $500,000 into a trust he majority owned. The HCCC alleged that in 2015, Dr Pincock encouraged one of his patients to invest $335,000 into the 'Australian Allergy Centre' trust while both still employing her and continuing the doctor-patient relationship. The patient alleged Dr Pincock made the representation that 'the investment would mean that her children with disabilities would be financially taken care of for life and that the return on her investment would be $5,000,000 in five years.' The Civil and Administrative Tribunal of NSW (NCAT) found that 'Dr Pincock did not know, even in general terms, how much the [clinic] business was worth or would be worth in five years' time.' Dr Pincock is currently barred from practising medicine until mid-2026 as a result of earlier findings. Orders from his latest tribunal hearing render him unable to re-register as a clinician for 9 months, which will expire within the timeframe of his earlier orders. Dr Pincock charged with any criminal wrongdoing in relation to what was raised in the HCCC proceedings.
South China Morning Post
15-05-2025
- Health
- South China Morning Post
Hospital scandal further eats away at public trust in China's healthcare
Over the past few weeks, what started as internet gossip about two doctors having an inappropriate relationship became a cloud of conjecture and controversy over one of the most prestigious medical schools in China. In mid-April, a letter circulated on the internet. It was apparently written by a woman accusing her husband, China-Japan Friendship Hospital surgeon Xiao Fei, of cheating on her with junior doctor Dong Xiying. More disturbingly, Xiao was revealed to have left an anaesthetised patient lying on the operating table so that he could defend Dong against a critical colleague. The hospital's response was to announce on April 27 that it would fire Xiao, after finding the accusations in the letter to be true. But this did not quell public anger, because people soon turned their attention to Dong, the female protagonist of the scandal. In the media and online, questions were raised about her unconventional path to medicine. Traditionally, anyone who wants to become a doctor in China needs to put in about 10 years, including three years of residency training. Dong is an economics graduate who switched to medicine via Peking Union Medical College's experimental '4+4' programme, which allows graduates of non-medical disciplines to complete Doctor of Medicine studies and a shortened residency in just four years. The US-style programme was launched by the college in 2018. At that time, college president Wang Chen said the idea was to break through the previous limitations of medical education and recruit multidisciplinary talent.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Yahoo
After $1bn settlement, doctor's sexual assault victims question Columbia University's inaction
It was a shocking scandal involving the betrayal of one of the most sacred bonds in medicine, as one of New York's top doctors abused hundreds of women under his care. Now, after a fresh settlement agreement last week from Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian hospital, the compensation for the crimes of Robert Hadden has approached almost a billion dollars and raised further questions as to how he was able to carry out his crimes for so long. The latest $750m deal covered two decades of sexual assaults by the gynecologist for more than two decades at New York hospitals. His victims had already received more than $200m from his former employers, who were accused of knowing about his behavior and allowing him to continue practicing medicine. Related: Sean 'Diddy' Combs's sex-trafficking trial begins with jury selection in New York 'It's a clear message that we're going to hold institutions accountable,' Laurie Maldonado, who spent about 10 years as one of Hadden's patients and was sexually assaulted by him, said of the settlement. 'Don't protect a serial predator; protect your patients.' In 2023, Hadden was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for luring patients to travel across state lines so that he could sexually abuse them. From 1987 until 2012, Hadden sexually assaulted and abused female patients during appointments and deliveries at Columbia University Irving medical center and NewYork-Presbyterian hospital, according to federal prosecutors. His victims even included some of New York City's most prominent women, including Evelyn Yang, wife of former presidential candidate and New York mayoral hopeful Andrew Yang. Hadden conducted an emergency delivery for Eva Santos Veloz in 2008 and checked her without gloves, using significant force and almost his entire fist, she said. 'It was a really traumatic experience,' said Santos Veloz, who was then 18 years old and scared to disclose the sexual assault because of her immigration status. Maldonado, who teaches and studies single-parent families and policy, said she saw Hadden from 2003 until 2012, during which time he engaged in grooming behavior by finding ways to get her to undress and asking inappropriate questions about her sex life. 'He really used his knowledge to make it seem like he was the only doctor for you,' said Maldonado, who had a miscarriage. In 2011, two days before she gave birth to her son, Hadden did a dilation check during which he examined her cervix with enough force to make her cry out in pain. 'It's supposed to be the happiest, joyful time of being a mother, and you feel like that moment was taken away from you,' Maldonado said. 'I feel like the harm and the trauma is still in my body.' In 2012, New York police arrested Hadden after receiving a call from a patient who said he licked her during an exam. Despite that allegation, a Columbia administrator allowed him to continue practicing medicine as long as he had a chaperone with him while examining patients and complied with university and hospital policies, ProPublica reported. He continued to sexually assault patients for five weeks before Columbia suspended him, and he later retired. In 2013, the university informed Hadden's patients that he had closed his practice but did not provide a reason, according to a letter in the ProPublica report. In 2016, prosecutors agreed to a deal in which Hadden would plead guilty to a felony and misdemeanor, register as a sex offender and surrender his medical license but not serve time in prison. After more women abused by Hadden came forward in 2020, federal prosecutors filed new charges, which resulted in the conviction and 20-year-prison sentence. Columbia University did not apologize until ProPublica published its report in 2023, according to the news organization. Before the settlement this week, the hospitals agreed to pay $71m to 79 patients in 2021 and $165m to 147 patients in 2022. The new deal provides $750m to 576 patients. 'This has been 13 years in the making, and I'm grateful for all my clients who have come forward to hold not just Hadden accountable, but more importantly, his enablers at Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian hospital,' said Anthony T DiPietro, an attorney for the plaintiffs. A Columbia spokesperson responded to an interview request with a statement that the university was 'implementing a multi-pronged plan, including an external investigation, a survivors' settlement fund' and new 'patient safety policies and programs to address the abuses of Robert Hadden'. 'We deeply regret the pain that his patients suffered, and this settlement is another step forward in our ongoing work and commitment to repair harm and support survivors. We commend the survivors for their bravery in coming forward,' the statement continued. A NewYork-Presbyterian spokesperson responded to the request by stating that Columbia would be 'issuing all statements on this issue'. Santos Veloz, who now has three children, called the most recent huge settlement 'a big win'. 'No matter how much they wanted to cover it up, we were able to work together to hold [Columbia] accountable in some way,' said Santos Veloz, who hopes to become an immigration attorney. Still, Santos Veloz said she is waiting to see if Columbia follows through with its plan to better protect patients. 'We could get all the money in the world, but if this continues to happen, it means nothing,' she said. Meanwhile, DiPietro, the plaintiffs' attorney, now representing hundreds of women in lawsuits against Dr Barry Brock, a gynecologist at Cedars-Sinai medical center in Los Angeles, who allegedly sexually abused patients, and against NewYork-Presbyterian, Weill Cornell medical center and Northwell Health, which employed Darius Paduch, a urologist sentenced to life in prison for sexually abusing patients, including minors. 'The Haddens of the world are not the problem; they are just a symptom,' DiPietro. 'The problem is the toxic culture at these medical institutions that lie, cover up and expose more patients to known serial sexual predators.' • Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at
The Guardian
10-05-2025
- The Guardian
After $1bn settlement, doctor's sexual assault victims question Columbia University's inaction
It was a shocking scandal involving the betrayal of one of the most sacred bonds in medicine, as one of New York's top doctors abused hundreds of women under his care. Now, after a fresh settlement agreement last week from Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian hospital, the compensation for the crimes of Robert Hadden has approached almost a billion dollars and raised further questions as to how he was able to carry out his crimes for so long. The latest $750m deal covered two decades of sexual assaults by the gynecologist for more than two decades at New York hospitals. His victims had already received more than $200m from his former employers, who were accused of knowing about his behavior and allowing him to continue practicing medicine. 'It's a clear message that we're going to hold institutions accountable,' Laurie Maldonado, who spent about 10 years as one of Hadden's patients and was sexually assaulted by him, said of the settlement. 'Don't protect a serial predator; protect your patients.' In 2023, Hadden was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for luring patients to travel across state lines so that he could sexually abuse them. From 1987 until 2012, Hadden sexually assaulted and abused female patients during appointments and deliveries at Columbia University Irving medical center and NewYork-Presbyterian hospital, according to federal prosecutors. His victims even included some of New York City's most prominent women, including Evelyn Yang, wife of former presidential candidate and New York mayoral hopeful Andrew Yang. Hadden conducted an emergency delivery for Eva Santos Veloz in 2008 and checked her without gloves, using significant force and almost his entire fist, she said. 'It was a really traumatic experience,' said Santos Veloz, who was then 18 years old and scared to disclose the sexual assault because of her immigration status. Maldonado, who teaches and studies single-parent families and policy, said she saw Hadden from 2003 until 2012, during which time he engaged in grooming behavior by finding ways to get her to undress and asking inappropriate questions about her sex life. 'He really used his knowledge to make it seem like he was the only doctor for you,' said Maldonado, who had a miscarriage. In 2011, two days before she gave birth to her son, Hadden did a dilation check during which he examined her cervix with enough force to make her cry out in pain. 'It's supposed to be the happiest, joyful time of being a mother, and you feel like that moment was taken away from you,' Maldonado said. 'I feel like the harm and the trauma is still in my body.' In 2012, New York police arrested Hadden after receiving a call from a patient who said he licked her during an exam. Despite that allegation, a Columbia administrator allowed him to continue practicing medicine as long as he had a chaperone with him while examining patients and complied with university and hospital policies, ProPublica reported. He continued to sexually assault patients for five weeks before Columbia suspended him, and he later retired. In 2013, the university informed Hadden's patients that he had closed his practice but did not provide a reason, according to a letter in the ProPublica report. In 2016, prosecutors agreed to a deal in which Hadden would plead guilty to a felony and misdemeanor, register as a sex offender and surrender his medical license but not serve time in prison. After more women abused by Hadden came forward in 2020, federal prosecutors filed new charges, which resulted in the conviction and 20-year-prison sentence. Columbia University did not apologize until ProPublica published its report in 2023, according to the news organization. Before the settlement this week, the hospitals agreed to pay $71m to 79 patients in 2021 and $165m to 147 patients in 2022. The new deal provides $750m to 576 patients. Sign up to First Thing Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'This has been 13 years in the making, and I'm grateful for all my clients who have come forward to hold not just Hadden accountable, but more importantly, his enablers at Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian hospital,' said Anthony T DiPietro, an attorney for the plaintiffs. A Columbia spokesperson responded to an interview request with a statement that the university was 'implementing a multi-pronged plan, including an external investigation, a survivors' settlement fund' and new 'patient safety policies and programs to address the abuses of Robert Hadden'. 'We deeply regret the pain that his patients suffered, and this settlement is another step forward in our ongoing work and commitment to repair harm and support survivors. We commend the survivors for their bravery in coming forward,' the statement continued. A NewYork-Presbyterian spokesperson responded to the request by stating that Columbia would be 'issuing all statements on this issue'. Santos Veloz, who now has three children, called the most recent huge settlement 'a big win'. 'No matter how much they wanted to cover it up, we were able to work together to hold [Columbia] accountable in some way,' said Santos Veloz, who hopes to become an immigration attorney. Still, Santos Veloz said she is waiting to see if Columbia follows through with its plan to better protect patients. 'We could get all the money in the world, but if this continues to happen, it means nothing,' she said. Meanwhile, DiPietro, the plaintiffs' attorney, now representing hundreds of women in lawsuits against Dr Barry Brock, a gynecologist at Cedars-Sinai medical center in Los Angeles, who allegedly sexually abused patients, and against NewYork-Presbyterian, Weill Cornell medical center and Northwell Health, which employed Darius Paduch, a urologist sentenced to life in prison for sexually abusing patients, including minors. 'The Haddens of the world are not the problem; they are just a symptom,' DiPietro. 'The problem is the toxic culture at these medical institutions that lie, cover up and expose more patients to known serial sexual predators.' Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at
