'Doctor Anal' resurfaces in Denmark

A Swedish doctor who was fired from his job in Norway for using a controversial 'anal massage' technique to cure various kinds of pain has resurfaced in Denmark where he has been working at a psychiatric ward in a Copenhagen hospital.

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Danish authorities said they were not aware that they had been dealing with 'Doctor Anal', as he has been referred to in the Danish press.

"It is tricky to carry out background checks on foreign doctors because rules vary from country to country," welfare board spokesman Anne Mette Dons told newspaper Ekstrabladet.

"Problematic doctors have been given free rein in Europe. We are currently working hard to change this situation," she added.

In April last year a council in the Nord-Tröndelag area of Norway dismissed the doctor after only two weeks, when they realized that he was the same man who hit the headlines a year earlier when another local authority fired him.

The man described his dismissal in Norway as part of a witch-hunt against him, and said that his technique was successful.

Several years ago, the man was warned by Sweden's Medical Responsibility Board (HSAN) on at least three occasions, after treating an elderly woman's headaches and back pain with his method. At the time he was working in the Stockholm area.

The Norwegian counterpart to HSAN also had cause to warn the man after he told Swedish jokes to a group of Norwegians who were mourning a death.

The man said at the time that he considered himself misunderstood.

"I have a personality disorder, or rather a syndrome, a form of Aspergers. Just like Bill Gates or Einstein, for example," he told Aftonbladet.

"I have made it impossible for myself within the healthcare sector because I behave childishly sometimes. I am different, but cleverer."

HSAN examined the research literature which the doctor used to support his use of his anal massage technique, but found that his treatment contradicted "scientific, tried and tested experience".