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Swimming in the Shallows

 

GMC Fitness to Practice Hearing

Against Dr Wakefield, Pofessors' Murch and Walker-Smith

Monday 8th June 2009 - Wednesday 10th June 2009.

 

It's hard to believe that I have been sitting in this hearing room in London while two years of my life and that of my family has slipped by. And now it's an odd experience listening to the defence closing speeches, odd because here we are in June 2009 with the defence lawyers finally answering, the prosecution charges made almost six years ago.

 

 Why this case seems particularly unlike other cases I have attended over the last forty years, is that although one is obviously in favour of the defence making it's case, a five year old could have filled in the gaps, corrected the confusions and challenged the untruths embedded in the prosecution case, in a couple of days following the initial presentation. To my mind what this cruel and unjust waste of time, not to mention £5M dropped down the drain, point to more than anything else is the absence in the proceedings of someone resembling a Judge. 

 

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Martin J. Walker is journalism tutor; senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Berlin, Copenhagen, Prague, Sydney and Toronto); bureau chief in Moscow and the US (The Guardian), European editor, and assistant editor; was an international correspondent; is editor-in-chief emeritus of UPI.