Cancer consultant suspended in dosage row

A prominent breast cancer specialist who has championed the right of patients to demand treatments that are unavailable on the NHS has been suspended from her post.

Elizabeth Whipp, consultant oncologist at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, was sent home from the hospital in November but details of her suspension have only now become known.

She leads a team investigating new ways of treating breast cancer and is understood to have been charged with administering too high a dose of radiotherapy to at least one patient.

High doses of radiotherapy may be used on localised areas of the breast after surgery to remove the tumour in women who refuse mastectomy.

The treatment depends on accurate targeting of the area to be irradiated using magnetic resonance imaging scans but it is controversial. Dr Whipp is understood to have clashed with another consultant over the safety of the therapy.

She is also alleged to have encouraged patients to complain over restrictions on the availability of herceptin, a breast cancer drug, on the health service. Herceptin has been shown in trials to extend survival in certain patients with advanced disease but it costs £20,000 to £40,000 a year.

The drug was approved by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) for certain patients in March 2002. At least two women who were refused the drug in Bristol area believed to have complained to their MPs.

Dr Whipp, 55, who has worked at the infirmary for more than 20 years, has long been regarded as an irritant by the hospital because of her determination to expose the shortcomings of the health service.

In 1997 she appeared on a Channel 4 programme that highlighted postcode prescribing in the NHS. The programme featured two women with advanced breast cancer, both patients of Dr Whipp, one of whom was receiving the drug Taxotere on the health service. The other had had to pay £10,000 a year for the drug because Avon health authority, where she lived, at that time refused to pay for it.

At the time health service managers argued that their priority was to recruit extra breast care nurses rather than funding "every new experimental drug".

Nice, established in 1999 to assess new treatments, has since recommended that Herceptin should be made available for advanced breast cancer patients on the NHS.

In an earlier programme in the mid-1980s, Dr Whipp provoked controversy by arguing that cancer patients should be told the truth about their condition.

In the early 1980s she criticised the charity Bristol Cancer Help Centre, which offered alternative treatments and was supported by the Prince of Wales, because at that time it advocated abandoning orthodox treatments, a view it has since changed.

The United Bristol Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs the infirmary, said an investigation was under way, which was expected to take 12 weeks. It could not release details.

In a statement, the trust said: "The Bristol Haematology and Oncology Centre would like to reassure patients of Dr Whipp that there is a minimal risk of patients receiving excessive doses of radiation. We have stringent procedures in place to prevent this from happening."