A consultant paediatrician will face a disciplinary panel today to decide whether he should be struck off for accusing a father of murdering his two baby sons after watching a television documentary on their deaths.
Professor David Southall, an expert on Munchhausen's syndrome by proxy with more than 30 years' experience, faces being struck off the medical register if the General Medical Council (GMC) decides his actions amounted to serious professional misconduct. But the council could also reprimand him or limit the medical work he can perform.
A GMC spokeswoman said the disciplinary hearing in Manchester was expected to reach a verdict by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.
Professor Southall, 55, accused Stephen Clark, 42, of deliberately suffocating his infant sons after watching a Channel 4 Dispatches programme in April 2000 in which he talked about his wife Sally's 1999 conviction for the murders of the two boys. Mrs Clark's murder convictions were quashed on appeal last year.
In June, the GMC decided Prof Southall acted in a way that was "inappropriate", "irresponsible" and "misleading" when he produced a report on the Clark family in August 2000. The paediatrician claimed it was "beyond reasonable doubt" that Mr Clark had suffocated his first son, Christopher, in a hotel room.
The GMC said the doctor's report was based on a theory about the case that he presented as fact underpinned by his own research.
But the council concluded that it was not an abuse of his professional position to contact child protection officers, voice his concerns to police or make the allegations at a time when he was suspended from his job at the North Staffordshire hospital NHS trust.
Prof Southall previously admitted to the GMC that at the time he produced his report he had not interviewed either Steve or Sally Clark. The paediatrician said he had declined another doctor's request to place a caveat in his report to child protection staff explaining that it was based upon limited information.
The doctor, who currently works at the University hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke, has always denied serious professional misconduct.
