Karol Sikora the Bristol Cancer Help Centre of whom the Prince of Wales is patron, and is a patron of the Ian Rennie Hospice at Home. Statements by Sikora have been critical of unproven methods of alternative medicine, after Parliament member Lord Maurice Saatchi proposed a bill allowing doctors to use unproven experimental therapies, and he has spoken out against claims that an alkaline diet can cure cancer. In September 2009, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds. The Daily Telegraph revealed that Sikora was one of three different doctors hired by the Libyan
Dumfries, Lochmaben and Lockerbie Railway CR proposed to build a line from Lochmaben to Dinwoodie, on the West Coast Main Line several miles to the north of Lockerbie, to make a more direct connection from Dumfries to the north; this would have avoided the reversal at Lockerbie, but the scheme was not proceeded with. In the years leading to 1876 passengers from Stranraer to London by the evening boat train went via Annan on the G&SWR to Carlisle, joining an LNWR train there. The arrival of the Midland Railway at Carlisle on completion of the Settle and Carlisle Line, and the alliance between the MR