Doctors question Kelly 'suicide'
29.01.2004 - By JEREMY LAURANCE in London
Fresh doubts about the death of Dr David Kelly, the British weapons expert, were raised yesterday by three doctors who questioned whether he took his own life.
The doctors suggested that the former United Nations weapons inspector could not have committed suicide in the way described to the inquiry chaired by Lord Brian Hutton.
Kelly was found dead in a copse near his Oxfordshire home in July after being named as the source of a BBC report claiming that the Government had sexed up an intelligence dossier on the threat from Iraq.
A forensic pathologist, Dr Nicholas Hunt, told the Hutton inquiry that Kelly had bled to death from a self-inflicted wound to his left wrist. But Dr David Halpin, a former consultant in trauma and orthopaedic medicine at Torbay Hospital, Devon, and two colleagues, question this account.
In a letter to the Guardian they say: "We view this as highly improbable. Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life threatening blood loss. Dr Hunt stated that the only artery that had been cut - the ulnar artery - had been completely transected. Complete transection causes the artery to quickly retract and close down, and this promotes clotting of the blood."
The authors of the letter point out that, according to the ambulance team who attended Kelly, the amount of blood at the scene was minimal and that it is unlikely he lost more than a pint of blood.
"To have died from haemorrhage, Dr Kelly would have had to lose about five pints of blood," they say.
Kelly had also taken an unknown number of Co-Proxamol tablets, a powerful pain killer, but the forensic toxicologist who examined him, Alexander Allan, concluded that the level of drugs in his blood was less than a third of what would normally be found in a fatal overdose.
Halpin said yesterday: "We would like this inquest reopened so that in this very important case, no stone is left unturned."
Support came yesterday from Dr Don MacKechnie, head of accident and emergency at Rochdale Infirmary and chair of the British Medical Association's accident and emergency medicine committee.
MacKechnie said: "From a factual point of view [the authors] are correct. When you transect an artery completely it usually does close off." But MacKechnie said it was possible Kelly died as a result of a sensitivity to the Co-Proxamol tablets. "I have seen well-documented cases of people dying with less than what would be regarded as a fatal dose."
Hutton assumed the powers of Oxfordshire coroner Nicholas Gardiner to combine the inquest into Kelly's death with the public inquiry. Yesterday, Gardiner revealed he had had numerous letters questioning the account given to the inquiry and was considering holding a full inquest. "I expect to have a hearing in March at which I will make my ruling," he said.
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