Hong Kong doctor jailed for 3½ years after woman died in city’s worst beauty treatment blunder

HONG KONG, Dec 13 (SCMP): A doctor found guilty of killing a woman through gross negligence in Hong Kong’s worst beauty treatment blunder has been jailed for 3½ years.

Madam Justice Judianna Barnes said Dr Mak Wan-ling had failed to exercise independent judgment, despite her role as a doctor on “the last line of defence in this money-grabbing venture” her employer had introduced to a network of 38 beauty centres under DR Group in 2012.

“Chan Yuen-lam [the deceased] trusted the defendant as a doctor,” the judge said. “The defendant, unfortunately for Chan Yuen-lam, failed miserably.”

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But Barnes also acknowledged that Mak was a relatively inexperienced doctor who truly regretted what she had done, and had suffered enormous stress in the past eight years, therefore reducing her sentence from the starting point of 4½ years.

Mak appeared calm upon hearing the sentence, while the victim’s husband, Yeung Kam-hoi, speaking through pro-establishment lawmaker Alice Mak Mei-kuen, said he felt comforted by the development but would not forgive the doctor.

The 39-year-old was convicted of manslaughter last week for breaching a duty of care she owed to Chan, 46, through administering an injection to the woman without obtaining proper consent and ensuring the blood product infused was free of contamination.

The treatment, promoted as a way to improve immunity, involved drawing blood from the customer for it to be cultured in a laboratory for proliferation of cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cells, at 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and 100 per cent humidity, before being injected back into the body, directly into the bloodstream.

Chan died a week later on October 10, 2012, of multiple organ failure and septicaemia as a result of Mycobacterium abscessus, bacteria later found on the pipette guns and centrifugal machine that handled her blood in the laboratory, Asia Pacific Stem Cell Science.

Killer doctor also suffered greatly from the incident, court hears

Two other women also fell seriously ill after receiving Mak’s injections at DR Group’s Hong Kong Mesotherapy Centre in Causeway Bay, sold at HK$59,500 (US$7,675) per treatment.

Mak admitted she had failed to obtain proper consent by not telling Chan that the treatment carried a risk of infection and adverse reactions, and that it was still undergoing clinical trials for cancer patients, with no scientifically proven benefit on a healthy person.

But the general practitioner also testified to believing the treatment was safe, with its benefits outweighing the risks in Chan’s case, and she trusted the laboratory had carried out the required sterility tests.

In mitigation, her defence counsel Peter Duncan SC, said that was “obviously a terrible error of judgment”, which could be explained by her relative inexperience, her misguided loyalty towards her employer, the excessive amount of trust she placed in others and the surprisingly low level of regulation at the beauty clinic where she worked.

Duncan also observed that his client was “seriously affected by the consequences” as she had developed depression under the enormous stress and adverse publicity over the past eight years, and her conviction would perhaps bring an end to her career.

A different High Court jury had failed to reach a verdict in Mak’s case while convicting her two co-defendants – her boss Dr Stephen Chow Heung-wing, 65, and technician Chan Kwun-chung, 34 – of the same charge following a 100-day trial in 2017.

Chow, who introduced the unproven treatment to customers of his lucrative beauty empire DR Group, was subsequently jailed for 12 years.

Beauty chain owner jailed for 12 years over fatal treatment blunder

Chan, the laboratory technician who handled the blood products without conducting any bacteria tests, received a shorter term of 10 years.

Both men have appealed their convictions and sentences, but the higher court has yet to hand down its ruling.

Prosecutors previously challenged Barnes’ interpretation of what they must prove to establish gross negligence manslaughter and won in the Court of Appeal in 2018, resulting in a more difficult test for the defendant.

Mak’s defence team subsequently appealed against the direction but the Court of Final Appeal unanimously dismissed her challenge.

Doctors in Hong Kong are rarely found guilty of manslaughter, an offence punishable by life in prison.

The convictions were the first of their kind in the city’s vast, largely unregulated industry of beauty treatment clinics that have offered everything from stem cell injections to body contouring surgery.

Hong Kong doctor guilty of manslaughter after beauty treatment killed client

The trio also face civil litigation, which have been put on hold for the criminal proceedings.

A separate complaint against Mak was lodged with the city’s doctors’ watchdog in 2015.

Lawmaker Alice Mak, who has been assisting the victims, said she hoped justice was served in the case and that the public would bear in mind risks that came with invasive medical treatments. She also called on the government to strengthen regulation and law enforcement to prevent a repeat of the tragedy.

Authorities have put forward proposals to identify procedures with potential safety concerns, and to regulate medical devices following the incident, but these have yet to be scheduled for debate in the Legislative Council. - South China Morning Post