Laser cancer treatment unproven - expert

A CANCER expert told a jury yesterday that patients must be protected from people experimenting on them.

On the 10th day of the trial of Paschal Carmody at Ennis Circuit Court, UK-based cancer expert Colin Hopper said the laser treatment used on cancer patients at Mr Carmody’s clinic was “unproven”.

Mr Carmody (60), of Ballycuggeran, Killaloe, Co Clare, denies 25 separate charges of obtaining €80,172 from six terminally ill cancer patients and their families by deception between September 2001 and October 2002.

Three of the patients received photodynamic (PDT) treatment at the East Clinic and witnesses have told the court that Mr Carmody said the treatment would destroy the cancer or cure the patient of cancer. Mr Carmody denies this.

Mr Hopper, a consultant surgeon at University College London Hospitals and senior research fellow at National Medical Laser Centre, London, said: “Patients must be protected from people experimenting on them. We do not like to see patients used as guinea pigs.”

Mr Hopper told the court he had carried out more than 1,000 PDT treatments, but said it gave him concern when he saw a form of the treatment on offer at the East Clinic that was unlike any other in any place in the world.

“This is not a conventional way of developing a new therapy. There is no track record from which a therapy can be developed.”

He said he had a long discussion with Mr Carmody at his clinic in 2002 on PDT treatment. Mr Hopper saw three of Mr Carmody’s cancer patients in 2002 and confirmed in a report that he thought it “miraculous” that one was alive long after he was diagnosed.

Pat Marrinan SC, for Mr Carmody, said the patient in question, Mark Hadden – who died just four weeks before the trial began – was told in 1996 by conventional medicine that he had only three months to live.

Mr Marrinan said Hadden went under the care of Mr Carmody and had treatments in Germany and Ireland of hypertherapy, immunotherapy and PDT and survived another 12 years.