By Trudy Simpson, Staff ReporterONE GROUP in the medical profession has come out in strong support of former Government pathologist, Dr. Royston Clifford, charging that he was being made the scapegoat to hide what was wrong with the local forensic system.
According to Dr. Winston Davidson, chairman of the Association of Public Health Doctors and of the education committee of the Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ), Dr. Clifford has given "yeoman service" to the Government and should not be penalised.
Last week the Government announced that it would not renew Dr. Clifford's contract because he had consistently refused to allow note-taking by independent pathologists during post-mortems. His refusal continued despite Prime Minister P.J. Patterson and the Ministry of National Security stating that as a matter of policy, observers can be allowed to take notes.
A letter from Mr. Scott was hand-delivered to Dr. Clifford just over a week ago, giving him 24 hours to respond to charges made mainly by Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), the human rights lobby group, that he was refusing to allow independent pathologists to observe and take notes at autopsies. He was asked to explain his stance by 1:30 p.m. on March 24, 2003. He did not.
On Thursday, the Ministry announced it would not renew its contract with Dr. Clifford. However, Dr. Clifford said that his contract had expired the previous month and that he had already announced his intention to leave the Ministry more than a year ago.
Stating that the National Security Ministry should have thoroughly reviewed its forensic department years ago, Dr. Davidson said that medical professionals "are the ones who treat the victims and we have seen the stupidity of the system for many, many years and that is why, knowing the level of inadequacies in the system, we could not countenance small groups and individuals trying to scapegoat Dr. Clifford."
He said that JFJ and other groups have made allegations against Dr. Clifford with evidence that they haven't tested and added "every human being, including a pathologist, including Dr. Clifford, is innocent until proven guilty."
He said that the human rights group should have "used the process and tested it in court. You can't run a country on people's whims, fancies and suspicions. You have a problem with Dr. Clifford, test it in court but don't continue to undermine the man's integrity and position (publicly). It's not right," he added.
In Dr. Davidson's view, Dr. Clifford was well within his professional right to refuse to perform a post-mortem with an independent pathologist looking on and taking notes.
"In a situation where you had no agreement to that effect, then you cannot ask that person to do it. Dr. Clifford had a right to refuse. Dr. Clifford had no agreement with the Government as far as we know that he should entertain cameras or whatever while he did the operations."
Dr. Davidson said that the real cause of various problems, which resulted in the sour end of Dr. Clifford's 17-year relationship with the Ministry of National Security last week, was that "the infrastructure and support for proper forensic pathology is woefully inadequate and has been for many years. You can't have one doctor in a mulititude of cases and ask him to be the one to be doing pathological examinations all over the place without the necessary support systems," he argued.
He also called for an increase in the number of pathologists and for a proper morgue. The Spanish Town morgue was only intended to be used temporarily when officials started using it over five years ago. Plans were to build a public morgue for Kingston and St. Andrew.
"One man cannot do it. You have to put in place a number of forensic pathologists. They have to know how many cases they are going to have per day, per week, per year. Otherwise, you are going to have problems," continued Dr. Davidson.
He also disagreed with human rights groups about the need for cameras, observer pathologists and other things at post-mortem, stating that these are not needed because science does not lie and there are several ways to get outcomes without public exposure and independent observations, including DNA testing, body fluids and other laboratory data.
