Richard McGown, who gave lethal doses of morphine to black patients

Feb 6, 1995

A White doctor in Harare, Zimbabwe, who allegedly experimented on Black patients was recently found guilty of professional negligence in the deaths of two children.

A judge ruled that Richard McGown, a physician who has been compared to a Nazi death camp doctor, gave unusually high dosages of morphine when administering anesthetics to five patients who died between 1986 and 1992.

Four of the five who died were Black. The fifth was of Greek descent. The court ruled, however, that the doctor's negligence caused the deaths of just two of the patients.

McGown's sentence had not been handed down at JET press time.

Doctor in Zimbabwe race row out on bail

February 11, 1995

The British doctor at the centre of a race row in Zimbabwe has been released on bail pending an appeal after being found guilty of culpable homicide and sentenced to a year in jail. Dr Richard Gladwell McGown had been vilified by the press and accused by MPs of carrying out Nazi-style experiments after several of his operations ended in death.

The High Court in Harare found him guilty of the culpable homicide of Lavender Khaminwa, aged 9, who died after an operation to remove her appendix, and 19 year old Kalpesh Nagindas, who died after being circumcised. Dr McGown was sentenced to a year in prison, with six months of it suspended, and fined pounds sterling760. Three other charges of culpable homicide were dismissed.

Dr McGown, born in India and brought up in Glasgow, studied medicine at Edinburgh University and graduated in 1959. He worked in Sweden and Zambia before moving to Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia, in the late 1960s. It was in Zimbabwe that Dr McGown built his reputation as a consultant anaesthetist.

He developed a particular interest in post operative pain relief, writing in several prominent medical journals about his new methods of caudal epidural anaesthesia. He presented papers on the subject in Paris and Lisbon in the late 1980s. But in 1993 a parliamentary report alleged that Dr McGown had carried out clinical trials to discover new ways of monitoring pain without following laid down procedures. The report claimed that 500 patients had been used and that at least five had died.

Under parliamentary privilege MPs likened Dr McGown to a Nazi doctor and accused him of experimenting on black people "as if they were cats and baboons." Furious protests by students and black activists followed the proceedings. Shortly afterwards Dr McGown was arrested and charged with culpable homicide. The charges of experimentation were dropped when the trial began.

The parents of the patients who died fought to bring the case to trial. Mr Charles Khaminwa, the father of Lavender, said: "This is a mockery of justice and a cover up. There is much evidence which has not been allowed to be presented to the court. I still want justice to be seen to be done before Zimbabwe and the world."

The case has shaken the confidence of Zimbabwe's health service and raised questions about the efficiency of state control. There are also fears about the quality of staff. The number of skilled doctors fell steadily during the 1980s despite the fact some 60 physicians graduate every year from Harare's medical school. One Harare based doctor, who asked not to be named, said: "Dr McGown's techniques have often been used in Britain and in Europe. But their success largely depends on after care treatment by experienced nurses, and I'm afraid that some of his patients may have died because of bad postoperative care by locally trained nurses."

Dr McGown's defence counsel is appealing against the judgment to the Supreme Court.