B-71 drug doc struck off - Yvonne Pambakian admits injecting her sister, Yolanda Cox, with 3x usual dose

Published: 10 March 2011
by JOSIE HINTON

A DOCTOR who injected an experimental “wonder” drug which caused the death of her sister has been struck off the medical register.

The General Medical Council (GMC) ruled it was “proportionate and justified” to remove Dr Yvonne Pambakian from the practising following “repeated and serious” failures in administering an unlicensed drug, known as B-71.

During a two-week hearing, Dr Pambakian admitted injecting her sister, Yolanda Cox, with three times the usual dose of the drug in June 2007.

The 22-year-old Oxford graduate, who had recently got married, collapsed in the living room of the family home in Finchley Road, Hampstead. She died seven days later at The Royal Free Hospital after suffering a massive allergic reaction.

Dr Pambakian also gave the drug to her mother and a woman terminally ill with cancer.

Dr George Lodge, chairman of the GMC panel, said he feared the “blinkered thinking and shortcuts” involved in Dr Pambakian’s misconduct could be repeated as three years later she had not fully acknowledged her failings.

He told Dr Pambakian: “The panel has accepted that you would not seek to repeat similar conduct in the future but it is concerned that you have not shown that you have recognised the full extent of the errors in your approach which led to your misconduct. 

“At no point during these proceedings have you offered an unqualified apology for your past breaches of good medical practice.”

Dr Lodge added: “The panel has considered whether a period of suspension would be sufficient but has concluded, in the light of your manifold failings and the lack of progress in attaining insight over the last three years since the events concerned, that to allow you to remain on the register would not maintain public confidence in the profession or declare and uphold standards in the profession.” 

At the time of the incident, Dr Pambakian had not been working as a GP for three years and was director of Amro Biotech, a pharmaceutical company set up by her mother, pathologist Dr Apri Matossian-Rogers, which had spent more than £3million developing the drug.

It had been tested on just 41 people for its ability to reduce insulin levels, but Dr Pambakian believed it could treat a number of other conditions.

Although healthy at the time of her death, Mrs Cox had been mistakenly diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) by her sister.

During the trials in Holland, volunteers were given doses of 2mg. Dr Pambakian estimated she injected Mrs Cox with three 6mg doses between May and June 2007.

She has been given 28 days to appeal against the decision before she is removed from the medical register.

Guilty verdict from last week's CNJ