DOCTORS throughout Britain have been urged to shop their colleagues after a family GP who used his patients as guinea-pigs for drug trials without telling them was stuck off.

Dr Geoffrey Fairhurst from Lowton, was told his name would be taken off the register after a three-day hearing at the General Medical Council in London found him guilty of using his patients as unknowing participants in drugs trials, for which he received payments of £15,000.

Sir Donald Irvine, president of the GMC and chairman of the professional conduct committee, told Dr Fairhurst, 59, he had undermined the medical profession, and urged other doctors to report malpractice, after hearing how Fairhurst's colleagues Dr David Edwards and Dr Min Shah blew the whistle on him.

Sir Donald: "Trust lies at the heart of the practice of medicine. Patients must be able to trust doctors with their lives and well being. That trust must not be abused.

"Medical research is fundamental to the advance of medical practice and must always be conducted with scrupulous honesty and integrity.

"Where doctors intend to involve patients in clinical trials, it is essential that they first give those patients a proper explanation. Patients have a right to know what it involves and understand the implications for them before they are invited to take part."

Sir Donald told Dr Fairhurst: "The facts proved against you in the charge demonstrate that you have repeatedly behaved dishonestly and have betrayed the trust placed in you by your patients, in particular by involving them in pharmaceutical trials without their knowledge or consent.

"You have also abused the trust of your medical colleagues and those with whom you were collaborating in pharmaceutical trials."

Sir Donald told Dr Fairhurst, who practised in St Helens, he had been found guilty of serious professional misconduct and would be struck off the register in 28 days unless he appealed.

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