Doctor is struck off for trying to sell unproven treatments to patient with advanced cancer | The BMJ
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Doctor is struck off for trying to sell unproven treatments to patient with advanced cancer | The BMJ
News BMJ 2024; 385 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q1192 (Published 30 May 2024) Cite this as: BMJ 2024;385:q1192
A doctor in private practice who tried to sell unproven treatments to a patient with advanced cancer has been struck off the UK medical register after the patient’s daughter, herself a doctor, complained to the General Medical Council (GMC).
The conduct of Julian Kenyon, who was medical director at the Dove Clinic for Integrated Medicine in Hampshire, was “wholly unacceptable, morally culpable and disgraceful,” said Aaminah Khan, chairing the medical practitioners tribunal.
Kenyon, who offered various alternative medicine treatments, was consulted in May 2022 by a man named only as Patient A, who had had stage IV metastatic prostate cancer diagnosed in December 2019. He had already received androgen deprivation therapy, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy and had recently been started on enzalutamide, a relatively new hormone treatment.
Patient A consulted Kenyon about supplementing this with ozone therapy, but Kenyon instead offered him a treatment plan consisting of cannabidiol, Claricell, …
Hampshire doctor struck off over sound therapy prescription
Dr Kenyon's prescription in May 2022 included sonodynamic/photodynamic therapy as well as the supplements cannabidiol, claricell and similase, the MPTS said.
The patient was asked to pay a further £20,000 if the initial course of treatment was unsuccessful, the tribunal heard.
He was told there was a 10% chance of his stage 4 prostate cancer being cured, which was a "total fabrication", the MTPS found.
The patient "was vulnerable and... made to feel under pressure to have expensive treatment that was not in his best interests", it added.
The man, who eventually refused the treatment, died in May 2023 after continuing with conventional therapy.
In 2003, an undercover investigation by the BBC Inside Out programme accused Dr Kenyon of using spurious tests for allergies.
In 2013, the tribunal found he failed to give good care. The following year, it said he made a misleading cancer cure claim.
The latest MTPS ruling bars Dr Kenyon from practising medicine in the UK.
His former clinic went into liquidation in March 2023 and has debts of more than £154,000, according to Companies House.
It was deemed to be "safe" and "effective", according to its latest Care Quality Commission report in 2019.
Dr Julian Kenyon is no stranger to this blog:
- Why do patients rarely complain about receiving bogus treatments?
- Integrated/integrative medicine: a paradise for charlatans?
- The ‘OBERON’: revolutionary invention or dangerous con?
I met him once or twice in the mid 1990s. Then he was the GP partner of the late George Lewith. It took me not long to find that I thought of the former even less than the latter.
Now it has been reported that Julian Kenyon was struck off the UK medical register. Apparently, he put pressure on a patient with advanced cancer to pay £13,000 for so-called alternative medicine (SCAM), including sound and light therapy. He ran the former Dove Clinic, a private health centre at Twyford, Hampshire and wrongly told his patient: “You have had all the standard treatments and you are running out of treatment options”. Kenyon’s prescription in May 2022 included sonodynamic/photodynamic therapy as well as the supplements cannabidiol, claricell and similase. The patient was asked to pay a further £20,000 if the initial course of treatment was unsuccessful, the tribunal heard.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) ruled that the doctor’s conduct was “wholly unacceptable, morally culpable and disgraceful”. Kenyon told his patient that there was a 10% chance of his stage 4 prostate cancer being cured. This was a “total fabrication”, the MTPS found. The patient “was vulnerable and… made to feel under pressure to have expensive treatment that was not in his best interests”, it added.
Kenyon has form:
- In 2003, an undercover investigation by the BBC Inside Out programme accused Dr Kenyon of using spurious tests for allergies.
- In 2013, a tribunal found he failed to give good care.
- The following year, it said he made a misleading cancer cure claim.
The latest MTPS ruling bars Dr Kenyon from practising medicine in the UK. His former clinic went into liquidation in March 2023 and has debts of more than £154,000, according to Companies House. Despite all this, it was deemed to be “safe” and “effective”, according to its latest Care Quality Commission report, external in 2019.
Dr Julian Kenyon - The Dove Clinic
Dr Kenyon is an integrated medicine physician and Medical Director of the Dove Clinic in Twyford, Winchester.
He is Founder-Chairman of the British Medical Acupuncture Society in 1980 and Co-Founder of the Centre for the Study of Complementary Medicine in Southampton and London where he worked for many years before starting The Dove Clinic in 2000. He is also Founder/President of the British Society for Integrated Medicine and is an established authority in the field of complementary treatment approaches for a wide range of medical conditions.
He has written approximately 20 books and has had many academic papers published in peer review journals and has several patents to his name.
He graduated from the University of Liverpool with a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery and subsequently with a research degree, Doctor of Medicine. In 1972, he was appointed a Primary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh.
Outside of his medical work, Dr Kenyon is an accomplished violinist who plays with the Doctors’ Orchestra – a charity organisation which again in 2016 played at the Cadogan Hall in London in support of Freedom from Torture.
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