[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Sunday Mail, a Scottish Sunday newspaper. it reads in part:]
A doctor has denied he was paid a fortune by the Libyans to say that the Lockerbie bomber was dying.
British cancer expert, Professor Karol Sikora, was one of three specialists hired by the Libyan government to examine Abdelbaset al-Megrahi shortly before his release last August. He said that the Libyan had only three months to live.
This was crucial because, under Scottish rules, prisoners can be freed on compassionate grounds if they are considered to have fewer than three months to live. Yet six months later, Megrahi, 58, is still alive. Yesterday Prof Sikora insisted Megrahiw as gravely ill and not expected to live much longer.
He said: "Some people think we were paid billions of dollars by the Libyans to say he was going to die. The fact is there was no pressure at all on us to say he was going to die.
"On the balance of probabilities, there was a 50 per cent chance he would die in three months. If you saw the clinical detail.he had all the signs.
"I only saw him on one occasion but I went through everything and talked to the prison doctors who had seen him day in, day out.
'I am very surprised that he is still alive. The latest informationl have from Tripoli is that he is not a well man and suspect he will be dead within a month or so."
According to the Times of 28 August 2009 it seems it was the advice of the unnamed doctor which was the deciding factor.
ReplyDelete'Dr Fraser’s report says: “Whether or not prognosis is more or less than three months, no specialist ‘would be willing to say’.”
Dr Fraser’s report, however, also contains a reference to the “opinion” of an unnamed doctor — thought to be a GP — who, says that the report, “dealt with him prior to, during and following the diagnosis of metastatic prostate cancer”.
It adds: “Having seen him during each of these stages, his clinical condition has declined significantly over the last week \. The clinical assessment, therefore, is that a three-month prognosis is now a reasonable estimate for this patient.”
Last night political opponents at Holyrood were claiming that the conclusion reached by Dr Fraser was based on what the unnamed GP had said and had not taken into sufficient account the more guarded views of the prostate cancer specialists.'
If this is true why then is Professor Karol Sikora taking the flak.
"...Prof Sikora admitted that the Libyans had encouraged him to conclude that Megrahi had just three months to live following his examination. 'The figure of three months was suggested as being helpful [by the Libyans],' he said."
ReplyDelete