French doctors and radiologist jailed for overdoses

Overdoses were given to nearly 450 cancer patients at the Jean Monnet hospital in Epinal in northeastern France between 2001 and 2006. It is the most serious incident of its kind France has known.

As a result of the errors, many of the affected patients suffered sexual dysfunction as well as serious digestive and urinary problems.

The doctors and the radiologist, who have all denied the charges, had been charged with manslaughter, failure to help people in danger and destroying evidence.

Six years after the first complaints were lodged with the authorities, the judges found radiologist Joshua Anah, 54, guilty of manslaughter and destroying evidence, sentencing him to three years in prison of which 18 months were suspended.

The court also ordered him to pay 10,000 euros (£8,600) in damages and banned him from practising radiography for five years.

The two doctors, Jean-Francois Sztermer, 64, and Michel Aubertel, 62, were convicted of manslaughter and for not helping people in danger.

They were each given four-year prison terms, of which two and a half years were suspended. They were also each fined 20,000 euros and banned for life from practising medicine.

Three health executives who had been charged with failure to help people in danger were cleared of the charges against them while the hospital was absolved of criminal responsibility.

At least 24 people treated between May 2004 and August 2005 received 20 per cent more radiation than recommended due to a calibration error linked to the introduction of new machines in 2004.

Human error also led to 424 other prostate cancer patients being administered with overdoses of between eight and 10 per cent between 2001 and 2006.

The mistakes were made in the calculation of the doses as previous treatments were not correctly taken into account.

Anah, who was in charge of calibrating the machines, has admitted to "inadmissible negligence" related to the installation of the new machines, as well as in the training of technicians using them.

The prosecutor had not argued for the two doctors to be convicted of manslaughter but the court still upheld that charge.

In his closing remarks, the chief prosecutor delivered a damning indictment of the doctors' "desire to hide the truth from the victims and their attempts to play down, even disguise their mistakes".

Throughout the case, lawyers representing the victims accused the doctors of playing God with their patients' lives and trying to bolster their professional reputations by using experimental techniques without taking the sufficient precautions.

The doctors blamed the mistakes on staff shortages and bureaucratic complexity of the rules surrounding radiation therapy.

Gerard Welzer, a lawyer who represented many of the victims, said he was very happy with the outcome.

"When it comes to the public health system these days, convictions are becoming more and more rare," he said outside court.