Wednesday, August 11, 2010

On Friday (Aug. 13) the imaginative concept of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a lucrative and honors-magnet invention of UK's Sir Roy Meadow, marks its 33rd anniversary of publication in the then prestigious medical journal Lancet.

Once Sir Roy appeared to be going down in the flames he smilingly lit for others, mostly mothers and children felled by unchecked problem, MSP morphed into FII (fabricated and inducted illness). It has masqueraded and marauded under a variety of titles.

Medical and mental health personnel, even ambitious law enforcement wannabes, created their own terms for the untested (NEVER yet submitted to accepted scientific protocol) coined phrase. Governments fund programs to instruct how to "find" it.

On this site much has been written both about Lancet's failure to minimally vet a tiny thought piece (2 ½ pages) provocatively entitled "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy: The Hinterlands of Child Abuse" on August 13, 1977. (Check past articles)

Reality remains: There is no fact that can be checked. There is no clue how or where to find a corroborating doctor, nurse, lab technician and none, even as Sir Roy's and his other pernicious theory about non-accidental infant deaths were held up to scorn and worse, has appeared to validate even a single aspect of what Lancet launched.

For reasons of its own, Lancet has recalled, as it were, an article by dedicated doctors who have provided transparency for their research. When does this worst of the worst—with literally deadly consequences pushed because of the fanciful MSP notion—gain the scrutiny and scorn it long ago earned from the start with Lancet editors?

When does Lancet protect its own honor rather than defending in silence the dishonor of the "Hinterlands" writer, not the "first" to discover or use the coined phrase? When does the whole truth matter? When does the truth that there never were any facts to be checked inspire Lancet to recall a still pernicious published theory?

Were it not for riding the coattails of Lancet's undeservedly prestigious reputation, Roy Meadow would hardly have been knighted and many, many families worldwide, my own included, would not have been assaulted by a bogus but seductive and emotive label.

August 13, 1977 is a day living in infamy until Lancet finally does the right thing and admits its careless 1977 free pass to publication for Roy Meadow and apologizes for its decades-long decision to let family after family fall rather than to confess to its complicity in promoting an airy fairy fantasy label.

Barbara Bryan, writer, researcher and investigative reporter BHBryan@aol.com