Dr Ray's 15 minutes of fame

Andy Warhol's portrait of Dr Ray

My description of the Citizen's Jury in Birmingham on the 18th (see previous blog) caused quite a stir and propelled the normally quiet and reclusive Dr Ray into the limelight of publicity.

Events unfolded with amazing speed after the Dr Rant team picked up the story. Within 24 hours all the major medical blogs had reproduced or linked to the story and even the political bloggers and the blogging MP Iain Dale gave it extensive coverage. Three separate threads started on doctors.net.uk and by Monday one of the threads had reached the top quality postings and the person who started the thread reached the weeks top author. By Monday afternoon, Hospital Doctor had picked it up and included it as top medical blog for the day.

Journalists and politicians were emailed and the word went out to uncover Dr Ray.

Initially almost all comments were supportive. The only exception was one anonymous on Iain Dale blog who complained that Dr Ray misused an apostrophe. Then one or two people pointed out that there was no supporting evidence for the statements in the blog and the early stirrings of the rebuttal unit could be heard. Hints of legal action for defamation of Prof Darzi appeared on doctors.net even though my only mention of him was to say that he was there. My work colleague answered enquiries from journalists and posted replies on doctors.net on my behalf asking for some other doctors who attended the meeting to confirm or deny that the blog was truthful but by this evening only two people had come forward to confirm that the notice period was as short as 24 hours and no one who attended the Birmingham meeting had appeared. Is it possible that my colleague was the only independent doctor at the whole Birmingham rally? It was, after all, fortuitous that she was free to attend because she was already on leave.

I think the whole episode is going to be forgotten in a few days. The opportunity to embarrass Gordo at the NuLabour Love-in will pass and the next we shall hear is that "following extensive in-depth consultation with the medical profession and stakeholders we have reached a consensus that the DGH model of care must be modernised to meet the needs of the 21st century" (i.e. closed down and replaced with privately run , profit motivated clinics owned by shysters, spivs and barrow-boys and staffed by Eastern Europeans).

Ara Darzi is doing a Downing Street webchat on Thursday and they are taking questions now. Obviously they will filter out any that might cause embarrassment or need a truthful answer but if several hundred doctors all ask him about his confidence in the consultation process it will presumably be on record somewhere and might come back to haunt them whether they choose to ignore the questions or answer them untruthfully.

Here's a funny thing. The consultant who attended the meeting and started the whole thing is on holiday and not a fan of blogs or the internet so is probably unaware of all the excitement.