Thursday, July 7, 2005

When world-renowned pediatrician Roy Meadow, knighted for dedication to child abuse work, defends himself against professional misconduct by disclaiming expertise in the field that brought him acclaim, it makes news.

Tuesday?s Guardian newspaper ran the headline ?Meadow denies being a child abuse ?expert?.? UK?s Press Association reports of the same day read ?Meadow ?not a child abuse expert?.?

That startling admission should have monumental consequences for American mothers and those worldwide who have been labeled with one or more of the pediatrician-elevated-to-expert?s theories.

Roy Meadow?s imaginative motivation theory?dubbed by him Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSP)?was taken for gospel in child protection agencies, courtrooms, taught in law enforcement and medical school texts and seminars and liberally used nearly anywhere mistreatment of children was suspected.

Although anonymous reporting was outlawed in 1984 in the old USSR because of unreliability, it is a mainstay of America?s laws permitting states to accept Congressional funding for child protection and foster care. Suspicion trumps objective medical data in most MSP prosecutions. And, there?s the rub.

Despite a total lack of science supporting the emotive MSP ?diagnosis,? courts became the crucibles. Judges as early as 1981, in California?s Phillips decision, pronounced paid professionals sufficiently ?expert? if they had so much as read several articles about the mythical MSP concept.

At the time the ?disorder? was attached almost solely to a mother deemed such an attention-seeking liar that her story?the whole truth?was unworthy of a cursory hearing. If ever sought her version was officially ignored or discounted.

Easy Answers; No Scrutiny

After all, who has time for a homicidal liar who gets herself pregnant and delivers numbers of children largely for the purpose of smothering, poisoning or in some other unimaginable way killing them off?

That theory gave swift, simple and easy answers and excused medical and other forensic failures to try learning what truly was at the base of tragic serial deaths of infants in the same family.

To UK?s Dr. Garrod, who in 1902 observed that metabolic disorders appeared to ?run in families,? there was far less mystery concerning familial serial deaths. Did Meadow and more miss those writings in med school?

Now that science shows the also emotive ?Shaken Baby Syndrome? theory cannot be diagnosed as described without severe neck injuries, and Roy Meadow?s credibility is as it ever was (without supportive science), one might think American mothers could relax and their children wrongly taken would be returned home.

Ah, but that would expose all wannabe ?experts? to reality, particularly America?s MSP guru Herbert Schreier, author of HURTING FOR LOVE that features an author-altered forward by Roy Meadow with the now ?discredited? doctor?s caveats excised. Never mind that Schreier revealed his own expertise evolved because people asked him questions. Had he sought answers, he might have blown the whistle himself, but his book became the de facto MSP textbook.

Will he and others accept responsibility and consequences because their mentor and pioneering medical professional was making it up as he went along and agree he (Schreier) did the same only more so?

Prosecutors Confess?

More to the point, the way prosecutors hate to lose?even when judges and juries see through groundless prosecutions for MSP and ?medical misrepresentation? despite a child?s medical record showing a legitimate problem?few will rush to admit their part in an era of cruel child-taking.

Meadow?s self-incriminating, self-serving admission to his nation?s General Medical Council published July 5, 2005 trumps his similar self-incriminating, self-serving proclamation found in the birthplace of MSP: the August 13, 1977 Lancet. (See: http://web.tiscali.it/humanrights/articles/meadow77.html)

It always was there to read. A few finally studied it, word on word.

Why wasn?t the man prosecuted decades ago for intentionally saltloading a baby frequently admitted to an emergency room with serially high levels of salt in his system?

But, did the detailed event ever happen? Why have no observers, lab technicians, members of that soon-dead (result of the doctor-directed salt overload?) child?s family come forward through the years, especially now that the UK press is likely to recount the rest of the untold story?

Could it be than none of Meadow?s unapproved, unmonitored and unconsented ?research? ever occurred? Is that why Sir Roy now claims that his notes were shredded? Are there no confirmatory files somewhere in hospital storage? Did he ever really salt a sick baby to ?prove? his MSP theory?

Meadow?s Many ?Laws?

If he did, can Roy Meadow not be examined for considerably more than misstating statistics of SIDS or cot death probabilities (as much as 100% with some unfortunate genetic disorders because the same parent sets are not ?random?)? The influence of his blatantly false numbers in the Clark case is the sole issue for the GMC inquiry, at least so far.

True, misusing one grossly exaggerated statistic imprisoned one guiltless and grieving mother and others in UK. His loosely-used ?Meadow?s Law??one death in a family is unfortunate, two is suspicious, and three is surely murder, to paraphrase?could easily have been upended earlier had anyone contrasted it with Dr. Garrod?s observations.

No court in America, no prosecutor, no mental wealth professional or adjunct colleague in related fields, any who helped seal the fate of innocent mothers, is likely to encourage having MSP ?finding? and labeling very seriously and scrupulously examined. Some will offer to do a ?self-study? with predictable results, no doubt.

Financial and emotional consequences dampen enthusiasm of even the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as state and lower courts, for thoroughly examining the story behind the onslaught of MSP-labeled prosecutions. When their obvious extraconstitutionality is ruled, and if justice ever is permitted guiltless parents and children traumatized by wrongful removals, taxpayers will get the bill.

Will American media finally turn off the mute button and tell the whole truth? Will courts cease to act as crucibles and admit there never has been any science supporting the imaginative MSP theory? Why have judges allowed MSP and more recently fabricated FIBS (factitious illness by suspicion) for so long?

The MSP concept was intriguing and always emotion-laden. Initially it was a dodge for undereducated or incompetent doctors who didn?t know or want to bother with medical genetics, increasing numbers of vaccine injuries, or environmental and other causes in undetermined deaths. Those possible causes, to this day, are ignored in most autopsies of unexplained infant and child deaths.

Morphed Over Time

Through the years MSP provided the perfect out in testy divorce-custody disputes. ?Mommy has Munchausen?s? nearly guaranteed a tax-subsidized switch of children to the accuser without leaving a malicious reporter?s fingerprints.

Thanks to America?s Adoption and Safe Families Act, and even before its passage, MSP became the label of choice for child protection agencies and pro-adoption groups wanting to ensure a supply of newborns for pre-adoptive families masquerading (with an official wink and nod) as ?foster? homes.

Sometimes in the guise of child safety, children are taken from families who choose not to follow particular medical advice or seek another opinion after careful research. ?Medical neglect? is the name of that game and it works using slight variations of the doctor-knows-best and CPS does the rest groupthink. Roy Meadow?s colleague David Southall perfected that ploy himself.

From the start and more so today MSP was and is the ideal choice to divert malpractice suits, save on managed care (by removing a chronically ill child from its most natural protector), recoup tax dollars supposedly spent on children not really ill, and as an immunized vehicle for annoyed or arrogant professionals who know they are covered by the purse of taxpayers and sword of government.

No, no matter what Roy Meadow says?and he only repeats the obvious, perhaps hoping he won?t have to admit his original Lancet article was bogus OR that he should be prosecuted for saltloading a sick baby?it will be a long-awaited miracle when American media tells the whole truth of MSP.

Font of ?Expertise?

Roy Meadow is not only the attention-seeking liar, the diagnosed behavior his theory projected onto mothers. His theory and each spinoff?Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome (Schreier?s version), MPB maltreatment (Louisa Lasher and M. Feldman), pediatric condition falsification (PCF foisted by R. Alexander and APSAC) and more?arise from the dust bin of Meadow?s original spin in Lancet?s ?Hinterlands of Child Abuse? article.

None of America?s ?experts? has a leg to stand on, or ever did, relying on MSP?s explanation, Meadow?s motivation theory, to explain that the mother must have done it. That is an armchair observation after little to no effort is made to learn the discoverable cause of a chronic, critical or confusing medical problem.

For close to three decades many, then hundreds, then thousands of professionals and increasing cadres of adjuncts (from nurses to counseling techs) have made themselves feel good and/or enlarged bank accounts by ?finding? MSP and helping to prosecute those awful accused parents and caretakers.

If courts, if previously mute media, if the taxpaying public prefer letting such protected professionals dis-member families without accountability, then common sense and even Roy Meadow?s admission of his lack of expertise is not enough to correct historical error yet.

Results of illness, conditions, adverse events connected with doctor-ordered drugs and vaccinations, shrouded in emotive, imaginative motivation theories as ?causes? will continue to pass as such.

Until decades of deceit are unveiled worldwide, hopefully by words of Roy Meadow himself, the lucrative world of MSP-spawned motivation theory remains alive and hell. ©

Barbara Bryan ( BHBryan@aol.com)