The Saatchi Bill: When Only the Fig Leaf Remains

23rd March, 2016 4

The Quackometer has been raising concerns for nearly two years that Lord Saatchi has been wanting to make a “Quack’s Charter” law in the UK.  The Bill’s aims were to remove a patient’s current rights to sue their doctor if they had been negligent. Instead, a doctor would have been required to perform some perfunctory box ticking that was supposed to show the doctor was taking due care. This change [read more…]

Write to Your MP Today about the Quack Saatchi Bill.

12th October, 2015 0

The Stop the Saatchi Bill Alliance are making an urgent call to action for people to write to their MPs about the resurrected Saatchi Bill. We need you to make sure your MP knows the facts about Chris Heaton-Harris’s Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill, which will have its Second Reading in the House of Commons this coming Friday, 16th October. This is an important opportunity for MPs to discuss and thoroughly [read more…]

Chris Heaton-Harris MP Resurrects Lord Saatchi’s Zombie Quacks’ Charter.

16th September, 2015 6

Lord Saatchi has been trying for a number of years now to introduce a law that would drive a coach and horses through well established medical negligence law. The effect of the law would be to seriously erode a patient’s right to sue a doctor if they were harmed through negligence. Under the Saatchi Law, a doctor who would currently be found acting without proper care would be free from [read more…]

Maurice Saatchi’s Zombie Quack Bill To Be Rushed Through Parliament.

29th May, 2015 3

Lord Saatchi’s so-called “Medical Innovation Bill” which has the aim of removing patient right’s to sue doctors if they use unproven treatments in ways that no responsible body would endorse was blocked from proceding through parliament during the last session. It now looks like Saatchi intends to try to rush it through again as a reintroduced Private Member’s Bill. The Bill has been listed on the House of Lords schedule [read more…]

How to Get Bad Law That Nobody Supports Through Parliament

27th January, 2015 11

Let us imagine an ex-advertising man called Lord Scratchy. After, his old PR firm, Itchy and Scratchy helped the Tory party win elections, he has now been given a seat in the House of Lords. Still working in PR, with many large American Breweries using his skills, he now introduces a Private Members’ Bill into the Lords which he calls the Free Beer Bill. In newspapers, he says that he [read more…]

Medical Innovation or Quackery?

12th December, 2014 19

One of the common marketing messages behind alternative medicine is that is represents true innovation in healthcare. Using one Prince Charles’ favourite words, it tries to offer “integrative” services by combining the best of ‘Western’, or orthodox, medicine with ancient traditions, Eastern practices and New Age ways of knowing. Doctors, in this thinking, are portrayed as hamstrung by their conventional medical training or, even worse, beholden to their imagined paymasters [read more…]

Fooling Nature: How the Saatchi Bill Will Harm Medical Innovation

2nd May, 2014 10

Lord Saatchi is proclaiming his consultation into the new Medical Innovations Bill a resounding success with “a staggering 18,655 people” supporting his bill and “fewer than 100 were against it.”. Saatchi plans to use his Bill to sweep away a fear of litigatation and “defensive medicine” so that doctors can be free to try new treatments of the dying without fear of the courts. Last week I wrote about how I feared [read more…]

The Saatchi Bill: A Quacks’ Charter

24th April, 2014 22

Maurice Saatchi, the former advertising businessman and Tory peer, has introduced a Bill to parliament designed to encourage medical innovation. After the death of his wife from cancer, Saatchi believed that doctors were being held back from making innovations that could save lives. The “Medical Innovation” Bill is designed to encourage and protect doctors who wish to try new things in cancer treatment with the aim of speeding up the rate [read more…]