Dr Karol Sikora (born 1948)[1] is a controversial and outspoken British physician specialising in oncology. He is currently Medical Director of CancerPartnersUK and dean of the University of Buckingham's medical school.
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Karol Sikora was born in 1948. His father was a Captain in the Polish Army who arrived in Great Britain during World War II.[2] He was brought up in Edinburgh, Stafford and London. He had a London County Council scholarship to Dulwich College before going to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge where he became a Foundation Scholar and obtained a double first.[3]
After obtaining his medical degree in Cambridge and Middlesex Hospital,London he went on to do a PhD in the Laboratory for Molecular Biology and then a clinical fellowship in medical oncology at Stanford University, California. Sikora first became an NHS Consultant Oncologist in 1980 in Addenbrokes Hospital, Cambridge and set up the first cancer clinic at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Huntingdon. He was Clinical Director of Cancer Services at Hammersmith Hospital for 12 years and was seconded as Chief of the WHO Cancer Programme for two years. He is currently Medical Director of CancerPartnersUK and dean of the University of Buckingham's medical school; the only private medical school in the UK.[4]
Sikora became Buckingham's first Dean and Professor of Medicine in 2006. He has created a postgraduate school based at Ealing Hospital which runs a two year Clinical MD programme in internal medicine. The first Clinical MD in internal medicine graduates were awarded their degrees in March 2011. A premedical course run by Medipathways in Birkbeck College, London has been established for which the University awards a Certificate in Higher Education (CertHE). Sikora is now creating a MBBS programme for graduate entrants using Milton Keynes Hospital as the main clinical base and using a version of the Leicester Medical School curriculum. Students will be charged the full cost of their tuition although bursaries and loans are available.
Sikora has co-authored or edited twenty books, including Treatment of Cancer and the Economics of Cancer Care. Sikora is known for his outspoken views,[4] and has written for the Times,[5] the Observer,[6] the Daily Mail,[7] the New Statesman,[8] and other publications. He is on the Advisory Council of Reform.[9]
In the 1980s, while head of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Cambridge, he espoused the cause of "Molecular Medicine" and did much to promote the idea that a better understanding of molecular biology would provide better diagnostics and treatments for cancer within 20 years. At Hammersmith he created a research laboratory funded by the Imperial Cancer Research Fund to specifically address this issue. Many of the new drugs for cancer such as Herceptin, Avastin, Glivec and Rituximab have come from this molecular revolution. One of his current commercial enterprises is CancerPartnersUK a company that is seeking to make up the NHS shortfall in radiotherapy equipment which is way below European standards in both capacity and technical quality.
Sikora is very critical of cancer care available on the National Health Service.[5] During President Obama's campaign for healthcare reform, he appeared in a Republican Party attack ad in the United States criticising the NHS.[10] The ad led Imperial College to seek legal advice to stop Sikora from claiming to be a professor of cancer medicine at Imperial; a claim that he had made repeatedly over the previous five years.[11][12] Sikora denied this charge responding in a letter to the Guardian that he had been appointed to a lifetime Chair in the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (now part of Imperial) and that he was currently entitled to the professorship and still does a regular cancer clinic at Hammersmith Hospital.
Sikora and the School of medicine at Buckingham have in the past been supportive of alternative medicine.[13] Buckingham for a short time offered a diploma in "integrated medicine" (a relatively recent euphemism for alternative medicine). Sikora was a Foundation Fellow of Prince Charles' now-defunct alternative medicine lobby group The Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health[14] and Chair of the Faculty of Integrated Medicine, which is unaffiliated with any university and also includes Drs Rosy Daniel and Mark Atkinson, who led Buckingham's "integrated medicine" course.[13] Sikora is also a "professional member" of the "The College of Medicine", a patient-oriented healthcare lobby group also linked to the Prince of Wales that appeared shortly after the collapse of the Prince's Foundation.[15] The College has been criticised extensively in the British Medical Journal for it's promotion of alternative medicine.[16][17][18][19][20] These claims have been contested by the College.[21] He is on the advisory panel of complementary cancer care charity Penny Brohn Cancer Care, formerly the Bristol Cancer Help Centre of whom the Prince of Wales is patron.[22]
In September 2009, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds. The Daily Telegraph revealed that Sikora was one of three different doctors hired by the Libyan government to report to them about Megrahi's condition.[23] Sikora's report concluded that Megrahi had only 3 months to live due to terminal prostate cancer. Sikora has since admitted that the "3 months" timescale was suggested to him by the Libyans. According to the Daily Telegraph, this was not the first time that Sikora had been economical with the truth.[24] Sikora's medical diagnosis was not used by the Scottish Justice Minister since it had been paid for by Libya, but his diagnosis did agree with the medical evidence that was used. Once released, Megrahi returned to Libya and far outlived the 3-month prognosis.[25] In July 2010, in an interview with the Sunday Times, Sikora said that "it was 'embarrassing' that Megrahi has lived much longer than expected." and "There was always a chance he could live for ten years, 20 years . . . But it's very unusual."[26] This quote was then used first by the UK press and then by a group of USA Senators [27] to undermine the Scottish decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds, and then to link the release instead with BP contracts in Libya. In reply, the Scottish Government stated categorically that Sikora's medical opinion was not used by the Scottish Justice Minister.[28] Sikora has since complained about the way journalists have reported his views and stated that there was probably a less than 1% chance of Megrahi living 10 years.[29]