Professor Roy Meadow questions his own existence

Professor Sir Roy Meadow, the paediatrician catapulted to derision on the basis of his flawed "expert" evidence at the trials of Sally Clark and other mothers wrongly convicted of the murder of their babies, is to appeal in the High Court against the General Medical Council's decision to erase him from the medical register.

"On average there are 24.3 million sperm in each millilitre of ejaculate" said a spokesman for Sir Roy's legal team. "Given that the volume of ejaculate is typically about three millilitres, there is a 1 in 73 million chance that any one sperm would contribute to fertilisation. You are uniquely you simply because that single successful sperm determined half of your genetic make up at conception," the spokeman told The Rockall Times. "The odds on you being you are therefore vanishingly small."

"If you also take into account that, on a population-based average, only 10 per cent of ejaculations actually take place in the presence of a second person and that only 10 per cent of these ejaculations are directed up the business end, the odds become something like 1 in 10 billion."

In what is widely expected to become known in legal circles as the "Meadow's Defence", Sir Roy's legal team will argue that it is illogical for the GMC to apportion blame to someone who, from a statistical viewpoint, is probably somebody else. "In constructing this defence strategy we have relied heavily on a little known highly specialised branch of philosophy called Yeast Logic™," said a spokesman.

A spokeswoman for the Royal Statistical Society said that she was astounded by the bizarre logic behind the proposed appeal: "The probability that Sir Roy is himself is close to one. In actual fact, it is one."

In a NotMeGov™ poll commissioned by The Rockall Times, 500 clinicians confirmed that they would consider using the Meadow's Defence if they ever ended up in shi*t creek with the GMC.

Previously

• Leading medic demands justice for Shipman
• National treasure Meadow put out to pasture
• Professor Roy Meadow drama wows West End