Dodgy cancer ‘cure’ doctor tried to get a judge to allow surgery on his own family
A CROOKED former doctor tried to persuade a judge to order a potentially deadly transplant operation on his unsuspecting family members, a court ruling has revealed.
David Waghorn wanted to convince the public he had a cancer cure, according to documents before the secretive Court of Protection.
He aimed to perform an operation to transplant stem cells from his wife to her adoptive brother, who was claimed to be dying from cancer and to have less than six months to live.
It was to be carried out with another struck- off doctor, Petrus Jooste. They spent more than two years trying to get a court order for the bone marrow transplant to go ahead.
Neither the wife who was to donate her bone marrow nor the brother who was to receive the transplant were told about the plan before the application was made, according to a ruling released by the court’s president, Sir James Munby.
He rejected the application for the operation and broke the usual tight secrecy enforced by the Court of Protection to allow Waghorn, 54, from Plymouth, and Jooste, 56, from Exeter, to be named. Sir James said: ‘There is a very strong public interest in exposing the antics which these two struck-off doctors have got up to, not least so that others may be protected from their behaviour.’
The judge pointed to a ‘curious’ statement by Waghorn’s son, who made the latest application for a court order and who was acting in a team with the two struck-off doctors.
This said that an order for the operation to be performed ‘will enable the public to obtain these life- saving and curative treatments, from family members – not only for haematological [blood] cancers such as leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma but also for solid tumours, with minimal residual disease’.
Waghorn was struck off the medical register in 2013, but in a statement in February he told Sir James that he was a doctor.
Jooste, a friend of Waghorn who was struck off in 2014 for endangering patient safety and ‘outrageous’ behaviour, also told the court he was a doctor. But Sir James learned the truth about the two men from a barrister from the transplant regulator, the Human Tissue Authority.
The application by Waghorn’s son said that Waghorn’s wife, named only as SW, had suffered a stroke and had no capacity to make decisions for herself. The son claimed to have a ‘lasting power of attorney’ over her health and welfare. This would allow him to make life-and-death decisions for her, if she has lost the ability to choose.
Sir James said there was no evidence the wife had lost mental capacity and there had been ‘no discussion or consultation’ with her about the operation.
The adoptive brother, named only as SAN, was said to be suffering from multiple myeloma.
He had also not been consulted about the operation, even though, the judge said, ‘allogeneic [genetically dissimilar] bone marrow transplantation carries “a significant risk of mortality” for the donee’.
In 2014, Waghorn had made an application to the court asking for power of attorney over the brother. A ruling at that time found there was no evidence the brother lacked mental capacity – and also that he did not want any surgical treatment.
Sir James said the attempt to persuade the court to order the operation was hopeless, because it is a criminal offence for anyone who is not a doctor to perform such a transplant. He ordered the son together with Waghorn and Jooste to pay the £7,671 costs of the authority.
In 2013 a fitness to practise panel found Waghorn was guilty of ‘a serious set of clinical failings’, an ‘uncaring approach to patient safety’ and of running an unregistered hospital.
‘Public interest in exposing them’