Puzzled Bottrill has no answers

By FIONA BARBER

The man in the witness box could have been talking about someone else.

It was as if he could not quite fathom that it was him, and not some anonymous third party, who was there to answer the tough questions, furnish vital answers.

But Dr Michael Bottrill was very much the man in the hot seat as the pathologist whose misreading of women's cervical smears had brought this ministerial inquiry to Gisborne.

Some of the affected women sitting in the public gallery wanted the answer to just one question: why were their slides misread?

By the end of the day, they were none the wiser.

Dr Bottrill conceded that he had under-reported smears to an unacceptable level, but he had few answers - only a failing memory after heart surgery, and possibly an attention-deficit problem.

Yes, something had gone wrong, he told the inquiry, but he did not know what. Whatever it was, he was not conscious of it.

At times he seemed mystified by questions put to him, on other occasions defensive.

"You are at a loss to explain to the committee how you could have misread so many slides?" asked inquiry head Ailsa Duffy.

"Yes," replied the 71-year-old.

A lawyer representing affected women, Stuart Grieve, QC, asked Dr Bottrill whether lack of proper training, lack of continuing education, no accreditation or no safety checks contributed.

The answer to each question was "no."

The health of Dr Bottrill, who refused to meet Mr Grieve's gaze during cross-examination, seemed to have deteriorated since he tendered his apologies to the affected women in May.

The pallor of his face almost mirrored the blue-grey of the suit he wore. He appeared confused and forgetful at times.

But the cross-examination was not the long and arduous haul it could have been - Dr Bottrill's health was taken into consideration and questioning was cut short.

When the inquiry started for the day, Ms Duffy decreed that this would not be a trial by ordeal.

Any action by people in the public gallery, such as the back-turning protest when he apologised in May, would not be tolerated, she said. The consequence of any such behaviour would be that his evidence would be heard in private.

As always, members of Dr Bottrill's family were in the public gallery to support him.

Close to them were women who craved answers but left with more questions.

Said Wendy Ure: "He's accepted the evidence of the expert witnesses, but I still don't know, as a woman affected, why my slides have been misread."

Damning evidence accepted by doctor

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