KEY POINTS:
A South Auckland doctor who agreed in the High Court to stop prescribing a medicine that can be used to make the illegal drug P appeared to have broken the deal four days later, a medical authority has heard.
Rhys Cullen, a Papakura-based GP, is accused before the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal of prescribing massive amounts of the decongestant Sudomyl. It contains pseudoephedrine, which can be used to make methamphetamine, or P.
Yesterday the tribunal revealed that for public protection it had suspended his registration without notice on March 29, pending the hearing of the professional misconduct charge. Separately, the tribunal suspended his annual practising certificate last Tuesday.
The tribunal, after hearing yesterday from Dr Cullen's lawyer, Graeme Little, and from Kristy McDonald, QC, representing the Medical Council's professional conduct committee, upheld its interim suspension order.
In 2005, Dr Cullen co-wrote a controversial book on Maori health that said Maori were entitled to enjoy smoking, gambling and eating fatty foods if they wished and Maori health workers who disagreed were brainwashed "house niggers".
The tribunal rejected Dr Cullen's bid to have the suspension order replaced by a ban on his prescribing Sudomyl. His request followed his undertaking to the High Court on February 1 in a deal with the Medical Council to avoid a Government ban on his writing scripts for the medicine.
But the tribunal's chairwoman, Kate Davenport, said it found Dr Cullen's explanations for his continued and excessive prescribing of the medicine to be "vague, inconsistent and unreliable".
"We cannot conclude with any real confidence that Dr Cullen will honour the condition he has agreed to have imposed on him."
A QC advising the tribunal, John Upton, had earlier highlighted information from the Health Ministry's Medsafe unit that he said suggested Dr Cullen had resumed prescribing Sudomyl between February 5 and March 12.
Mr Little questioned this interpretation, saying Dr Cullen contended his undertaking to the High Court was conditional. "The Medical Council did not comply with their condition not to take sides and he took that as an indication he was no longer bound by his undertaking."
He said the prescriptions identified by Medsafe "probably predate the undertaking", although the medicine was supplied on the date stated.
He asserted that although Dr Cullen's behaviour might have been bizarre and eccentric, there was no case to answer. "There is not a jot of evidence of any improper use of this material."
The police were the first to investigate Dr Cullen's high level of Sudomyl prescribing, said to have reached about 50,000 tablets since 2004. No criminal charges have been laid, but Ms McDonald said the investigation was ongoing.
Dr Cullen maintains his prescribing was part of research into pharmacists and pseudoephedrine and a name-suppressed associate of his said in a sworn statement it was to form part of a book on Maori health.
But Ms McDonald rubbished this. "Nowhere has [Dr Cullen or the associate] been able to demonstrate any credible basis for this claimed research." She found "unconvincing" the associate's evidence that Dr Cullen disposed of Sudomyl in a medical waste container that was sealed and taken away weekly for incineration.
