So-called “rogue surgeon” Ian Paterson has been suspended by Britain’s General Medical Council after accusations he performed “unnecessary or inappropriate” breast operations on over a thousand women in the UK.
Investigators claim he misdiagnosed at least 450 of those women with breast cancer when they were in fact cancer-free, performing unnecessary mastectomies and lumpectomies, and placing them on brutal treatment regimens when they had no cancer to treat.
There are testimonies from some of the women here. One of the falsely diagnosed women even planned her own funeral, believing she had advanced metastatic disease. Some of the women are suing the hospitals that allowed this to happen.
Going through surgery, chemo, radiation, and drug treatment for breast cancer was, for me, a living nightmare. It has left me feeling violated, damaged, and broken. I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like for these women, who didn’t even have the disease in the first place. Words truly fail me. If the claims are true, and he did what he did for some kind of perverse pleasure from harming others, I hope this sicko ends up in jail for the rest of his life.
(photo: Accused breast surgeon Ian Paterson, via Guardian. HT: Gordon Rae
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