As GCC is adamant on going ahead with the prosecution, they are using private prosecutor not The Crown Prosecution Service. Dr Kola attended the hearing as summoned with his Barrister and accordingly pleaded not guilty. The full trial hearing is now adjourned till Thursday 20th June 2019.
Please keep sharing and sponsoring the petition. Thank you for your continued supports.
For your additional information, please read the latest development on the relevant case brewing:
From: Richard Lanigan <richard@spinaljoint.com>
Date: 13 March 2019 at 23:40:30 GMT
To: <e.karpinski@gcc-uk.org>
Cc: dr kola Akindele <drkola41@yahoo.com>
Subject: Section 32 (1) Chiropractors Act 1994
For the Attention of Emily Karpinski
Investigating Committee
The General Chiropractic Council
186 Kennington Park Road
Dear Emily,
Regarding your letter of 1/3/2019;
I resigned from the GCC register in November 2008, In fact one of the pages you present as evidence, is my letter of resignation from the register, which you cannot have read or much of the contents on the "chiropracticlive.com" blog, which is very critical of the GCC. I wear my resignation from the register and not using the chiropractor title, as a badge of honour. The letter clearly states; "From January 1st 2009 my professional title in the UK will be; Spinal Health Care Practitioner, however this does not change the fact, I trained for five years at the Anglo European College of Chiropractic, the college which has set the European standard for chiropractic education, I received my masters in health promotion from Brunel University in 2004, was awarded a Fellowship by the College of Chiropractors in 2008".
In addition, since resigning from the GCC register, I changed the name of my practice from Park Clinic to Spinal Joint, with a new website www.spinaljoint.com , so as to avoid confusion with the past. I completely rebranded our service, to a multi disciplinary provider with many different professionals, no doubt the Osteopathic or Physiotherapy councils, could also make baseless claims that I am implying to be an Osteopath, because I perform spinal manipulation or a physiotherapist because I give advice on exercise. There are similarities in the services all health care professionals provide and unless the GCC has finally managed to define chiropractic practice as being separate and distinct from medicine and ruled out the possibility of chiropractors prescribing, The GCC won't be able to lay claim to the practice of chiropractic and have people like me return to the register. The GCC definition of chiropractic is quiet different from mine, yours is a modernist biomedical approach, I didnt wish to practice chiropractic in a medicalised manner and as the GCC was not insisting on the higher, European standards of education for its registrants, I resigned from the register.
No doubt you have contacted again after 10 years, because you have been chasing a number of former chiropractors to rejoin the register, after the GCCs incompetence wasted millions of pounds of the professions money. It forced the GCC to sell its premises on Wicklow Street and you are not getting any more money from me to waste on over zealous regulation. Over the years, I have advised many former chiropractors on how to resign from the register. I have always been happy for my name to be provided as an example of the process they were following, which I knew was within the law. How do I know this?
On 24/3/2009 the GCC instructed a Private Investigator to pose as a patient in an effort to entrap me into claiming I was a "chiropractor". For 18 months the GCC refused to release the Investigators report as required under The Data Protection Act, because essentially it outlined how to resign from the register without infringing the law of the land and in essence supported my right to continue to work while displaying my qualifications, as long as I did not use the title chiropractor and made clear I was not registered by the GCC and did not continue to take X-Rays.
Eventually the GCC were forced by the "Information Commissioners Officer", to releases the investigators report, it is in your files, I have a copy if it was misplaced when you moved offices. I would also point out that in 2010, the GCC informed me that they were authorised to instruct private investigators to conduct surveillance by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), however back in 2010, I contacted RIPA, and they stated the GCC was not acting under their authority, my solicitor believed that it was the GCC that was acting outside of the law, by Instructing Private investigators to engage in surveillance on private civilians without grounds and could be interpreted as harassment and intimidation. The Council for Health Care and Regulatory Excellence told me under "Freedom of Information", that the GCC was the only health regulator that used private investigators and had instructed them 19 times in that period. Having used two years to obtain the report, I was beginning to develop heath problems, I decided to draw a line under the matter and did not pursue it further. I was diagnosed with cancer in 2011 and have no doubt, ten years of stress, fighting GCC regulatory incompetence, contributed to my illness.
I probably know more about the Chiropractors Act of 1994 than most people on the "Investigating Committee" and I have no doubt they will be quiet shocked by the contents of this letter, which is, just the tip of the iceberg, I spent years uncovering.
In 2007 I was elected by a substantial number of votes to sit on to the actual council. The five chiropractors who proposed me had all faced vexatious "Fitness to Practice" hearings, where the charges were dismissed. The GCC costs to prosecute those cases were over £400,000 the profession elected me to make the activities of the GCC more transparent which I did. However my actions resulted in me being removed from the council at an Extraordinary General Meeting in March 2008 by 14 votes to 6 for breaching the confidentiality of GCC meetings. My statement at the meeting of March 8 2008 lasted about an hour and should be in the minutes if not its on the blog ( http://chiropracticlive.com/not-fit-for-purpose/ . In essence I stated the GCC was not fit for purpose, much of that was down to the way the Chiropractors Act was written and complaints acted upon. My concerns came to pass the following year, when 1,000 vexatious complaints were made by chiropractic skeptics and almost bankrupt the GCC and brought the chiropractic profession to its knees. This resulted in all 4 chiropractic associations expressing “No confidence" in the GCC in 2010.
The Chiropractors Act only protects the title "Chiropractor" and not the practice of chiropractic.
I was a member of the GCC when Medical Doctor Mr A Kurukgy told a patient of mine that he was a "chiropractor" and treated the man three times. I got my patient to make a complaint to the GCC. In this case, it took the GCC months to respond to the complainant and then only after I e-mailed them 4 times on behalf of the complainant. In March 2008 GCC officer Winnie Walsh wrote to Dr A Kurukgy who was practicing at the Groves Medical Centre in New Malden informing him that he was in breach of section 32 of the Chiropractors Act 1994. Dr Kurukgy was not reported to the police by the GCC. The reality was there was nothing the GCC could do to stop Dr Kurukgy claiming to practice chiropractic, even though he had no training in chiropractic, which at the very least was a breach of "Trading Standards" or the "Advertising Standards Authority", who legislate over such matters and who I would answer to for the services I offer to my patients.
You say in your letter "it has come to out attention that you may be acting contrary to the provisions of section 32(1) of the Act in that you are describing yourself (both explicitly and implicitly) as a chiropractor on the following websites), your use of the word 'may" in the charge suggests you dont even know if there has been a breach of the Chiropractors Act?
You suggest making changes to three blogs I have written. You provide an example from the blog of the site which is “Joe's Story" , I dont think the word chiropractic is actually mentioned in the article. The Irony of your letter is not lost on me, you provide information for me to rejoin the register, however if I was on the register, Joe's Story would be a breach of The GCC Code of Practice?? Advising Patient to stop taking the drug Tramadol and "criticising another heath care professional for prescribing them in the first place. What the GCC would have made of me taking Cannabis oil for my terminal cancer, if I was on the register is anybodies guess or helping the mother who started the successful campaign in 2018 to leagalise canabis for medical use is anybodies guess.
I can see why the GCC would like me to change or remove the www.chiropracticlive.com blog from the internet. I was on the register and using the title chiropractor when I wrote most of those posts. You were not able to make me remove the posts when I was subject to your authority and its certainly not going to happen now, the public and chiropractors have a right to know how the GCC behaved in the past, if only to keep them honest in the future.
In 2006 the GCC spent over £100,000, going to the High Court in an attempt to have 60 of my posts describing the activities of the GCC removed, they claimed I was defaming the GCC Chief executive and Registrar Margaret Coats. They also wanted to identify and prosecute chiropractors who had posted comments on the site. You can imagine my shock at the time to find some of the inflammatory comments were coming from GCC computers and were being posted by the Chief Executives deputy Greg Price. He was pretending to be a chiropractor, acting as an agent provocateur to generate complaints against real chiropractors. He was forced to resign his position at the GCC after I exposed his underhanded activities, which only made me wonder about the things I never knew about. And you wonder why I am not on the GCC Register??
You say the use of the title "Chiropractor" or the nebulous notion of "implication", "can be widely interpreted by the police and the courts", this is only because how badly the chiropractors Act was written and the fact these assertions have not properly been challenged in court. To comply fully with your wishes, I would need to leave the country, as no one can delete the past completely. I have made every effort as is reasonable to change all connections with my time as a practicing chiropractor. I only mention it on the websites to make it absolutely clear I am not using the title or am on the register. So I put it to you that the reason anyone might think I was a chiropractor is more to do with the past and the reputation I have developed rather than anything I am doing today. The Chiropractors Act should have been written to protect the practice of chiropractic and its educational standards, rather than just the title and was written in that manner for political expedience.
My reputation in the chiropractic profession began when I was elected president of the AECC Student Union in 1992. In 1993 pointed out to the BCA and ECU that the Chiropractic Act was badly written and not acceptable to students and we would not join the BCA if our concerns were not addressed. The BCA gave assurances which took 25 years to be carried out and subsequent events speak for themselves; I qualified as a chiropractor with a DC and BSc in 1996 and have been practicing in the Kingston area, seeing thousands of patients over the years. I was a founder member of the United Chiropractic Association (UCA). I was made a Fellow of the College of Chiropractors after getting my masters in Health Promotion in 2004. I was the first UK chiropractor to have a website in 1998, the first to blog in 2002 and host discussion forums, while Facebook was just an idea in Mark Zuckerbergs head. I was elected onto the Council in 2007 and was probably the most high profile chiropractor in UK and Ireland at the time.
I have not been on the register for ten years, yet when I was a guest on "Good Morning Britain" in August 2018 and a number of radio programmes, to talk about children's health, I was at pains to point out to the producers that they should not describe me as a chiropractor even though that is how most people even chiropractors describe me. Every year hundreds of chiropractors come to the UK to give lectures and they all use the title "Chiropractor", even though they are not entitled to and if the GCC objected, it would only draw attention how badly written the "Chiropractic Act" is and encourage every Tom, Dick and Harry to offer chiropractic services.
You also question having my qualifications on display; I am highly qualified, should I hide my qualifications? In fact I doubt if most members of the public know what DC stands for, there is even debate within the chiropractic profession itself in UK as to what it means. Are members of the public not entitled to know the person they are visiting has qualifications and insurance. In fact I am more qualified than the vast majority of "chiropractors" on your register. being on the register, does give credibility to some incompetent chiropractors, as some of your "Fitness to Practice" cases clearly demonstrates, that is what you should be focusing on, instead of harassing me again.
Like it or not, if it looks like a rose, smells like a rose, most people would call it a rose, even though I keep saying, I am not a "Rose", your private investigator asked me many times in 2009 what I called myself, its in the transcript and the answer was the same each time; "Richard" and I practice chiropractic. So my question to you is, if you dont think I should call myself Richard, what should I call myself, I don't like names like Osteomyologist but looking forward to hearing your suggestions?
Resigning from the register made little difference to my practice, we opened in 1993 and I am very good at what I do. In fact many registered chiropractors go to "Richard" to have their spines adjusted and I could provide you with a long list of registered Chiropractors they would not go to. My indemnity insurance was reduced by 50% because, the risk to them is less, by me not being on the register. In fact the only down side was I could no longer take x rays as I had resigned from the register and had to sell my X ray equipment at a loss of £20,000.
Many chiropractors use the Dr Title, I did not because the public confuse it with the practitioner being a medical doctor, which I am not. In the GCC Code of Practice you make it clear that Chiropractors who use the title doctor must make clear they are not medical doctors, You have prosecuted a number of chiropractors for not making it clear as I do, regarding the title "chiropractor". I do not use the title Dr or chiropractor anywhere and make it clear I am not on the register, I can do no more short of leaving the country or not working in health care.
and that is not going to happen.
in 2013 I was given months to live and I believe my chiropractic education is why I am alive and cancer free today. I am writing a memoir about the experience www.rectalcancer.me In the coming months, there will be much media interest regarding my traditional chiropractic approach to heath as outlined in the Netflix documentary "Heal". I hope what I call myself or my relationship with the GCC does not become an issue of interest. I have not been involved in the politics of the chiropractic profession for 10 years now and I believe it would be best for all of us if it were to remain like that.
If I have missed something and there is something on the internet describing me as a chiropractor and it is in my power to delete it, I will be more than happy to comply otherwise, I have nothing further to add.
Yours Sincerely
Richard Lanigan DC, MSc
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