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An Auckland GP accused of prescribing massive amounts of a medicine which can be used to make the illegal drug P says the 80,000 tablets were part of a research project on racism.
Dr Rhys Cullen is facing charges before the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal for over-prescribing the
decongestant Sudomyl, which contains pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in methamphetamine or P.
The tribunal suspended his practising licence in March, a suspension which Dr Cullen appealed.
His appeal was last week dismissed by Justice Baragwanath in the Auckland High Court.
In his decision, Justice Baragwanath said Dr Cullen's explanation for the unusual amounts of the prescribed drug was he was researching a book on racism in medicine.
"It was, he says, his purpose to perform a test of reactions of pharmacy personnel to prescriptions on behalf of patients of different races in order to discern whether there is discrimination in their treatment."
However, Dr Cullen also disregarded a court order forbidding him from prescribing the drug, just four days after the order was made, which Justice Baragwanath said he could not ignore.
An affidavit from the Ministry of Health showed that from October 2006 to February 2007 Dr Cullen prescribed 38,140 tablets, and that sometimes the same person was prescribed twice in a single day.
This compared with the five other doctors in the area who prescribed a total of 425 tablets for the same period.
As a consequence, the Medical Council has "very real and grave concerns" about the safety of the public from Dr Cullen's ongoing prescriptions of the drug, according to Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal.
In February, the Herald on Sunday was the first to report that Dr Cullen was investigated by the police after prescribing about 46,000 tablets of Sudomyl between January 2003 and December 2004.
However, drug detectives were unable to collect enough evidence to charge the GP with supplying precursor materials for drug manufacture. Subsequently, Crown Law made an official complaint to the Medical Council.
In a letter, which was dated October 2005, Crown solicitor Deborah Marshall wrote to the Medical Council and alleged that Dr Cullen:
Wrote 790 prescriptions between January 2003 and December 2004 when there was no medical reason.
Wrote prescriptions for patients who were not receiving medical care at the time.
Obtained Sudomyl for his own use between December 2003 and January 2004.
At the time Dr Cullen was still practising, but was later banned from prescribing and appeared before the tribunal.
Since then, he has been evicted from his South Auckland practice for owing $73,000 in unpaid rent and was stopped from opening his own practice because he did not have enough patients.
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, and Maori health workers who disagreed with him were brainwashed "house n.....s".
