Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Ethics briefing
  1. Natalie Michaux1,
  2. Allison Milbrath2
  1. 1 Research and Policy, Nuffield Council on Bioethics, London, UK
  2. 2 Nuffield Council on Bioethics, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Ms Natalie Michaux; nmichaux{at}nuffieldbioethics.org

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Doctors and protests

Following the well-publicised case of Dr Sarah Benn, the former General Practioner (GP) who was suspended from the UK medical register earlier this year for breaching injunctions in order to peacefully protest climate change,1 uncertainty and wider discourse has persisted about the extent to which doctors can be involved in protests without risking regulatory action.

In response to this uncertainty, in July the General Medical Council (GMC) published an explanation of how it manages concerns about doctors’ actions as part of protests and activism. It includes the statement that they are bound by law to refer any conviction resulting in a custodial sentence directly to a Medical Practioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) hearing.2 They also state that the nature of the protest does not impact their consideration of whether there was a serious breach of professional standards or a risk to public protection.2 The move to clarify the GMC’s position has been cautiously welcomed by the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change but with criticisms that important questions remain unanswered, such as the GMC’s rationale for determining that public confidence in doctors is harmed by convictions arising from environmental activism.3

Interest in this issue shows little sign of fading, as regulatory action continues to be taken against climate activist doctors. Dr Diana Warner, a retired GP, was suspended from the medical register in August following a series of convictions for …

View Full Text

Footnotes

  • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.