Doctors Struck Off For Being Gay

The General Medical Council are the UK’s regulatory body of doctors. Their main role is public protection and to say that UK doctors have little trust or faith in the organisation is an understatement.

They have recently revealed that they investigated, sanctioned, issued warnings to or banned numerous doctors from practising due to now outdated convictions outlawing male homosexuality. Between 1899 and 1994, the GMC initiated fitness to practise proceedings against over 40 male doctors because they were gay. Of those, at least eight were erased from the medical register as a result i.e. lost their license to practice. While the last of these was in 1966 (the year before homosexuality was officially decriminalised in the Sexual Offences Act 1967), the GMC continued to consider cases and administer sanctions into the 1990s, all on the grounds of a doctor being gay.

The GMC have issued an apology and conceded that they “did not know the precise total of how many doctors were reprimanded or struck off because of their sexuality.” I can only hope that this admission translates into funded research into the harms the organisation has caused.