Context
This page is a compendium summary of Private Eye’s sustained “M.D.” column coverage of the Letby case from late 2023 onwards. Dr Phil Hammond — practising GP, broadcaster, and the author of the column since 1992 — has used his fortnightly platform to walk readers through the medical-evidence concerns in real time, working from the primary record and independent expert commentary as it emerged.
The arc of the coverage
Across roughly forty columns between autumn 2023 and the present, the coverage has worked through, in sequence:
- The air-embolism problem: Dr Shoo Lee’s 1989 paper and how the skin signs described at trial do not match.
- The insulin assay methodology: why the Roche Cobas screening result was never designed for forensic use and was not confirmed by mass spectrometry.
- The shift-rota chart: how its construction replicates the Sally Clark selection-effect problem.
- The institutional pattern at the Countess of Chester: consultants’ 2016 letter, the RCPCH review used as an alternative to police, the apology-letter sequence, the eventual arrest of three executives.
- The NEC differential: why evolving necrotising enterocolitis is a plausible alternative diagnosis on multiple “air in stomach” counts.
- The Allitt framing effect: how the Operation Hummingbird investigation was shaped from the outset by the wrong analogy.
- The Panel reports of February and June 2025 and the CCRC application of October 2025.
Why the column has cut through
Hammond writes from within the medical profession but for a lay readership, with a decades-long track record on NHS patient safety. The column’s sustained week-on- week treatment of the case is the single most consistent UK press coverage of the conviction-safety question. It has been cited by Sir David Davis MP in his Commons adjournment debate, by the Bar Council letter signatories, and in the October 2025 CCRC application materials.
Specific column references
Rather than reproduce copyrighted column material here, this page signposts the categories of argument Hammond has worked through. The full column archive is available via Private Eye’s website. Subscribers also have access to the full historical run.
Read alongside
Dr Phil Hammond — biography, Private Eye M.D. column overview, Media coverage, Where the evidence now stands.