COMMENT

IT’S almost impossible to fathom the twisted mind of a surgeon who could deliberately risk the lives of hundreds of women through unnecessary and botched mastectomies.

But wicked as Dr Ian Paterson was, the real scandal is that he was not stopped sooner. Fifteen years after he should have been struck off for almost killing a mother when he sliced through three major blood vessels, he was still allowed to carry out his butchery.

Fellow oncologists raised the alarm but, like so many NHS whistleblowers, they were either ignored or bullied into silence as his employers, the Heart of England Foundation Trust, praised him as ‘highly effective’ and good at hitting targets.

So the Mail asks: Why has no one at the Trust been brought to book for this betrayal of patient safety?