The right to inject Botox and regulatory matters

Once again in March 2012 there is agitation to prevent the basic human right to self-inject in UK or to have Botox injected by a competent person. In medicine competent person is the one who has the skill. In law competence can meant something different but in this particular case it is the same.

(Click on photo to read an article in Daily Mail published a couple of years ago on Botox kit on Ebay)

Recently, a doctor who treats clients with Botox but does not prescribe it as he is no longer registered with medical regulator was approached by a investigative film maker. She said she wanted Botox and asked if he was a qualified doctor and he said he was. This is true. He did qualify as a doctor. The film maker did not ask if he was a registered medical practitioner. Now the idea is to present to the viewers that he misrepresented himself as a registered doctor which is an offense in law. The film maker thinks it is wrong for those no longer registered to have a title doctor because it could mislead the patients. Well, we shall see about that later just who is misleading whom. Many people who are not medical doctors have the title doctor: vets, dentists, and others from other disciplines of non healthcare nature (PhD's). That is not misleading and everybody could inject Botox if competent to do so.

Everybody knows that competent patients inject every day sometimes a couple of times a day with insulin. They do know they must get the right dose and that insulin overdose can be lethal. No secret TV exposures there.

Similarly, there are other powerful drugs that patients self-inject for example, those who have hepatitis C may inject weekly antiviral drugs. One of the side effects can be depression and confusional states. Again no secret TV exposure there.

Medical regulator wants more power for a bit of a show. For some time GMC wanted to appear that they would act against bad doctors if they only had the power to appeal "soft" FTP decisions. But FTP do what they are ordered anyway. Milgram's experiments already exposed important aspect of human nature : majority of human beings submit themselves to authority no matter how wrong the authority is. Those submissive characters work at GMC anyway and there is more of them there than in the normal population. Conformism reigns and patients do die because of that. Whistleblowers get struck off because FTP panelists cannot cope with cognitive dissonance in any other way than to rage against the victim.

It is intolerable to GMC that any doctor could actually survive injustice following Fitness To Practice procedures where innocent doctors could be fitted by their devious colleagues. Once the doctor is struck off the persecution continues except when their own council members turn up to be exorcists. Then, GMC can find nothing in law, no law regarding misrepresentations, no law regarding contracting on false representations, nothing on failure to declare conflicts of interests and so on.

When the doctor cannot be struck off there is need to destroy his livelihood anyway. The law in UK is that prescribing of Botox is regulated and some nurses and doctors can prescribe it (registered practitioners) but anyone can inject it who is competent to do it including patients themselves. Most people cannot stomach injecting themselves which is understandable and prefer somebody else to do it. In this doctor's practice there is a nurse who can prescribe. Doctor not registered with medical regulator injects. What a lovely product of Labour Party politics. Reversal of roles from traditional image of doctor prescribing and nurse injecting.

GMC still has its policy of persecution of doctors in private practice. 5e. Here medical practitioners in private practice are lumped with criminals all in one breath as targets for GMC investigation following a complaint against them. The rest can go on a bonding weekend with their NHS managers. Because the rules for NHS doctors are different. They have special privileges afforded to them by GMC: the right to work even if they know they prescribed medicines that led to cardiac arrests.

So even when there are no complaints against some doctors there is need to manufacture them.

Click on photo to read Daily Mail article.