Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Either "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy" (MSP) is an imaginative invention of an attention-seeking medicine man or Roy Meadow should be prosecuted for intentionally saltloading a sick baby.

He wrote nearly 28 years ago he did exactly that and in recent years claims his notes were "shredded" What a classic in-your-face and catch-me-if-you-can!

Hiding in wide open spaces for all to read has been Roy Meadow's outrageous confession in his "Hinterlands of child abuse" article, all two and one-half pages of it, appearing in the August 13, 1977 Lancet. (See: http://web.tiscali.it/humanrights/articles/meadow77.html)

Suspected and labeled mothers were too busy trying to liberate sick children from medical neglect or risky experimentation, professionals gratefully bowed to Meadow as their Mecca, judges let courtrooms become substitute crucibles of acceptance and science was dismissed.

So who read, when, and what has been done about it since?

Back to the Beginning

After years of reading writings "about" MSP, later fortified with solid evidence of its having no scientific support per work of scrupulously academic researchers (lay and professional) and a stalwart journalist, this writer tired of the fantasy fray and chose the "Hinterlands" piece for her contribution to unveiling the whole truth behind MSP.

Documentation shows reference to such for years before she finally read each word of the piece several years ago and ascertained what always had been there: a voluntary confession by Roy Meadow attesting to his unfitness to practice even before that August 1977 Lancet article hit the presses.

Apparently inspired to keep up with colleagues who recently had published on "salt-poisoning" in the British Isles--geographically contained and quite likely to replicate familial metabolic disorders, as UK's Dr. Garrod had noted in 1902--Roy Meadow parlayed a possible "aha" experience he claimed he had with a blood-switching mother into his motivation theory.

The tiny "Hinterlands" article, the one that launched Roy Meadow's career, careening success and ultimate inevitable exposure, clearly stated that the first mother had not harmed her six-year-old daughter nor was she seeking attention.

When a baby boy presented often to emergency with high levels of salt in his system, rather than suspecting an inherited genetic disorder (one with similar signs published a decade earlier in pediatric literature), Roy Meadow either saw a chance for a good story and meteoric boost to his position or cruelly and on his own hook actually experimented on a babe who he wrote died at 15 months.

Who Done It? Genes or Medical Genius?

Using "we"--whether the royal "we" or with some other individual involved in the "shredded" notes or entirely invented saltloading story--Roy Meadow boldly states that the serially chloride-overloaded baby was purposely fed salt. Of course, as his mild-mannered hands recount the medical maltreatment, Meadow unilaterally forcefed the salt only to prove that the infant's mother, in some manner undetermined, repeatedly had given him salt.

Those noted "gastric erosions" appear routinely in similar serious illness and dying situations and the baby's were not severe.

Maybe his real or imagined mother did give something to the real or imagined baby...in her genes or in an unfortunate combination with genes of the real or imagined father.

What Roy Meadow wrote he had done was not standard treatment, not an accident and not research in any reasonable sense of that word. Sometimes I use the acronym TAR for the armchair test of MSP's validity but RAT works as well. Frankly, the well-read original Lancet article creates an equally odiferous aroma and should have from its intial review.

Where is anyone--any survivor of that putative child's family (and have any of their children been similarly affected), any nurse, any lab technician, any junior doctor, anyone anywhere--who participated in Roy Meadow's unapproved, unmonitored and unconsented "research"?

What respected medical journal ever has printed any peer reviewed replicated similar and so casually accepted research?

If any journal review board dreamed of countenancing such as Roy Meadow managed to get away with for nearly three decades with "Hinterlands" it would soon have no readers or advertisers.

Lancet Should Apologize Too

Did anyone on a 1977 editorial board at Lancet read the small piece before permitting publication? Did anyone ever suggest recanting? Was there ever a thought to apologize to the hundreds and thousands of families worldwide forever separated? To the untold numbers of never abused children ripped from natural families who may well be dating family members unaware?

Frankly, it is Lancet's reputation, as much as that of Roy Meadow, that is under scrutiny.

How could it possibly have taken close to three decades to discern what the man himself blatantly illustrated: that he was unfit to practice (emphasis on the word "practice") medicine on hapless children and, by attachment, set agents of the law and those who recommend reallocating children upon their stunned parents and caretakers?

Babies, some newborns snatched from hospital delivery rooms legally but immorally, have grown into teens and adulthood believing false but official tales about their presumptively murderous mothers with fathers in denial. Why should they trust government or inquiring bodies to do right when their members did not bother to read Roy Meadow's words proving he did wrong?

Still, unfettered after "Hinterlands", the man managed to be knighted and to have his word accepted and handsomely paid for no matter how far-fetched it truly was. In the open his confession was ignored; in courtrooms his pronouncements were adored.

He got away with it 28 years ago. Is his number finally up because he went too far? Just once and only in the Clark case? Or is the whole world-changing empty bag, the one that began in Lancet decades ago and should have been the smoking gun for every judge, prosecutor, professional and child protection agent claiming to have an "aha" experience for the next 28 years, is that one finally exposed?

Have the man admit his "Hinterlands" article was a hoax and call to account every person anywhere in the world who prosecuted any claim based on MSP or other FIBS (any variant name for factitious illness by suspicion), if that's what Roy Meadow's "shredded notes" story demands.

Or, prosecute the man for his self-confessed saltloading of a sick baby and proceed to hold accountable every agent of every jurisdiction worldwide who prosecuted (including switching at the last minute "Oh, this isn't MSP any more; it's just child abuse") Roy Meadow's emotive and mythical motivation theory. (c)

Barbara Bryan ( BHBryan@aol.com)