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Another Medical Kidnapping

leela

Senior Member
Messages
3,290

Little Bluestem

All Good Things Must Come to an End
Messages
4,930
and moving on the the probably permanent damage this "treatment" has done to Justina's health.
 

Little Bluestem

All Good Things Must Come to an End
Messages
4,930
At a closed-door hearing last week, Juvenile Judge Joseph Johnston and his court-appointed investigator set in motion a plan ... , with Tufts Medical Center doctors expected to assume primary oversight of her medical care, according to three sources briefed on the case.

However, two of those sources said Friday that state officials are rethinking the idea that Tufts would take a leadership role in treating Justina, after at least some providers there expressed concern about getting involved in the highly contentious case.

So now reputable medical facilities are becoming afraid to take 'non-standard' cases. :aghhh:

Children’s officials, while declining to discuss specifics about Justina’s case, have repeatedly stressed that the hospital does not keep patients in its care against the direction of the custodial guardian, which, for Justina, has been the child-welfare agency.
And the child-welfare agency is the custodial guardian exactly because Children's called them in to keep Justina there. :bang-head:

Justina’s case has drawn national attention by ... highlighting the growing use of the term medical child abuse, which can be attached to parents seen to be pushing for unnecessary and potentially harmful medical interventions for their child.
What? :jaw-drop: I thought the term medical child abuse was attached hospitals taking/keeping children against their and their parents' will and forcing detrimental "treatments" on them. :mad:
 

leela

Senior Member
Messages
3,290
In what universe is it not normal that parents advocate with every bone in their bodies for what they think is best for their kids? They are supposed to just roll over and take it when a bunch of arrogant whitecoats--or worse yet, incompetent state bureaucrats--tell you they're taking over your child's life? So now, if you stand your ground, you are "resistant" "over-involved" and "medically abusing" your kid if you insist on a certain standard of care.
Horrifying.

In the earlier articles it was mentioned that Children's Services had been so grievously incompetent in the past that they had recently had a major overhaul and a name change (dept of families and children i think) and I believe this was an overzealous (understatement of the year) play to redeem themselves. Yeah, great job everyone.
 
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Iquitos

Senior Member
Messages
513
Location
Colorado
Crazy-making, isn't it?

I remember a couple of cases where doctors were so eager to "protect the child" that they went to court to get pregnant women committed to hospitals where they were handcuffed to their beds.

One was where the doctor told the woman to stop having sex with her husband and to stop smoking. She stopped smoking but admitted she had had sex with her husband. The doc went to court and got a ruling to have her locked up until she have birth. She was handcuffed to her bed.

In another a woman who had had 4-5 babies already was taking longer than the doc thought she should to deliver. He wanted to do a C-section. She refused, saying she knew everything would be OK. The doc got a judge out of bed to issue the court order to force her into surgery, but before he got back to medically abuse her, she had already given birth to a healthy baby.

If I remember right, these cases were both in California. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
 

leela

Senior Member
Messages
3,290
Justina is still in state custody. Some more details of the insane, dangerous way the BCH doctors handled her "care":
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/advoca...state-pysch/story?id=22312907&singlePage=true

Excerpt:
Justina seemed to be doing well on treatments for mitochondrial disease until February 2013, when she got the flu," according to Pelletier. "When you have mitochondrial disease and get sick, it hits harder."

Justina was in pain and had stopped eating, so the family called Korson, who recommended Justina see Flores again, who by then had moved to Boston Children's Hospital, said Pelletier.
[...]
"She had been there three days, and doctors had not had any conversation with Dr. Korson," he alleges. "They had not looked at any page of her medical records from Tufts."

On Feb. 13, Boston Children's presented the Pelletiers with a treatment plan for their daughter, which explicitly excluded input from other doctors outside its own medical team.
[...]

The plan stated that her "medication regimen will be simplified with a gradual reduction of medications to a small set of essential, non-detrimental, modestly dosed medication with limited side effects." The plan cited drugs that would continue "for now": Lyrica, which is indicated for fibromyalgia and nerve pain; and a "vitamin cocktail." But other drugs would be discontinued: Tegretol, for brain disorders and epilepsy; Milodrin, for low blood pressure; and Metoprolol, a beta blocker.

Pelletier said that when Justina was about 7, an MRI verified she had a large stroke on the left side of her brain, which affected her short-term memory. He said that withholding drugs that stabilize her heart rate could compromise her health.

I am so looking forward to the lawsuit that gets these people stricken from the AMA.
 

leela

Senior Member
Messages
3,290
And from another article"
The girl’s father, Lou Pelletier, noted that Monday will be the one-year anniversary of Justina’s admittance to Boston Children’s Hospital, where she stayed through 2013. He said her condition has only worsened.

He said that Justina is now in a wheelchair and is “pretty much paralyzed below the hips.”

“She’s not being treated medically, or going to school,” he said. “There are so many rights being broken and no one’s being held accountable.”

http://foxct.com/2014/02/04/justina-pelletier-is-still-in-state-custody/

Insanity.
 

Ren

.
Messages
385
The following is a blog entry on the Pelletier case, by lawyer and advocate Ted Chabasinski: http://www.madinamerica.com/2014/01...busive-psych-wart-bostons-childrens-hospital/

I'm not familiar with Mr. Chabasinski, but perhaps others are? He writes that he himself was abused by psychiatrists as a child. And according to his blog, Justina was not allowed to return to her Tufts doctor after all and is instead now in the psych ward of a different hospital.

Chabasinski also wrote, "...the Bader 5 psychiatrists are all acolytes of the notorious Harvard child psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Biederman, who has received millions of dollars from drug companies to promote the mass 'medication' of children..."

Chabasinski also mentions at least two other young children who died while in the "care" of Harvard psychiatrists.


I haven't read all the comments on the Pelletier story, but this one caught my eye:

"...There is another major development. The Coalition for Diagnostic Rights:

“We are an organization in development born about a year ago through conversation about proposed changes to somatoform disorder, then rushed along to site design when we discovered the heartbreaking case of Justina Pelletier. The CDR developed as part of a natural conversation among doctors, patients, psychiatrists, philosophers and patient advocacy groups – a vital community of people and organizations who share concern about recklessness in the diagnosis of somatoform disorder.”

Please visit their new site : diagnosticrights.org ..."

Perhaps this group is worth checking out for our community?

------------

Edit: I just glanced at the above group's site, and they list ME (but not CFS) as one of the diseases where patients are at risk of receiving a somatoform diagnosis: http://www.diagnosticrights.org/high-risk-groups-2/
 
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taniaaust1

Senior Member
Messages
13,054
Location
Sth Australia
Sadly, Justina will not celebrate the holidays with her parents.
She remains in a locked psych ward after ten months.
And these abusers accuse the *parents* of medical abuse?!
Shameful!

http://www.boston.com/2013/12/20/ju...controversy/ljRBLSKEA3Xd6e1ZUIWthN/story.html

Even if she goes home now, I wonder how she will ever feel safe in the world again.

One thing I think we can be sure of is that she certainly wont trust doctors she doesnt know well ever again. She'll never feel safe again sharing symptoms with them.
 

taniaaust1

Senior Member
Messages
13,054
Location
Sth Australia
If someone has some energy and know how.. maybe a good article to put on wikipedia would be on "medical kidnapping" .. and list various ones this has happened too including the ME/CFS cases.

I wonder if this family will ever sue.. it may turn out that they are blackmailed into not doing so..eg on the condition of receiving their daughter back. It wouldnt surprise me.
 
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15,786
I wonder if this family will ever sue.. it may turn out that they are blackmailed into not doing so..eg on the condition of receiving their daughter back. It wouldnt surprise me.
A "settlement" which includes restoring parental rights in return for not suing for the violation of the rights, wouldn't be approved by any competent judge, and certainly would not hold up in court.
 

Cheshire

Senior Member
Messages
1,129
Here's a video made by the coalition again paediatric pain featuring psychiatrist Richard barnum about the diagnosis of conversion disorder or somatoform disorder in children experiencing "unexplained" pain.

Here are some quotes:

9.53 Obviously, just from the point of view of validity of the diagnosis, if you have as a diagnostic criteria that there needs to be an underlying conflict that’s contributing to it, there’s something so non specific about that that you can’t possibly ever consider this to be a valid diagnosis, because people always have underlying conflicts.

10 41 In terms of the way this particuliar diagnosis is used routinely, it’s important to be aware that it’s almost never made on the basis of psychiatric assessment, or any other kind of mental health assessment, it’s almost always made on the basis of nothing more than failure to arrive at a clear medical diagnosis for the symptoms or functional deficit or whatever it is, and it’s made by non psychiatrist, by physicians who are puzzled and frustrated and that’s the only basis for it. … When the diagnosis is made it’s almost always in a manner that is quite careless and represents really nothing more than frustration and efforts to explain something that is essentially unexplained, unexplainable by the person making the diagnosis, and essentially put responsability on the patient’s unconscious.

12 40 There are incredibly profound problems with how this diagnosis gets used. Obviously in the first place, it leaves the actual medical problem unreckognised and untreated. The essential accusation of dishonesty that this diagnosis represents is compelingly distressing for patients. It undermines the patients own genuine subjective reality of what’s going on with them, it undermines the trust between doctor and patient. Espacially for children it’s explicitly powerfully traumatic to be accused essentially by a doctor who you trust and revere of being a lyer, dishonest. This is how patients experience being diagnosed with conversion disorder.

14 40 Obviously when you get into thinking about this in detail, the whole concept of developing this symptom or functional deficit as a result of unconscious mental processes, is just incredibly problematic. There’s no way to validate it, to make any sens of it. ….

15 10 The other obviously important difficulties with the way this diagnosis gets used is that it doesn’t do any good, not only does it do harm, but it doesn’t ever lead to effective treatment. I’ve never seen i’ve never heard of it from anyone that upon being diagnosed with conversion disorder the patient leaves the room with good ideas about how to proceed to get their symptoms releved through the process of whatever it might be in the way of psychiatric care.


And an interesting article by Judy Stone in Scientific American, with a frightening depiction of how Dr. David Sherry, a professor of pediatrics at University of Pennsylvania, treats children with POTS, considering it to be conversion disorder. She also speaks about Justina Pelletier's case.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...8/have-pain-are-you-crazy-rare-diseases-pt-2/

Please forgive my spelling, but my usual computer is out and the actual doesn't have an english corrector, and I'm really bad at english spelling.
 
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Iquitos

Senior Member
Messages
513
Location
Colorado
Thanks Cheshire, you did good!

This is just another illustration that accusing a patient of "conversion disorder" is analgous to accusing people of being witches once upon a time. Whether it sticks depends entirely on the political power of the accuser. The accused is in a lose-lose position. If the "witch" sank after being thrown into the lake, she was innocent (though drowned). If she didn't sink, she was a "witch", subject to being pressed to death or burned or whatever cruel and usual punishment the politically powerful could think up.

Too much of psychiatry/psychology is a reincarnation of the Inquisition.
 

leela

Senior Member
Messages
3,290
@Cheshire , thank you for the above.
I especially love that dr. barnum is himself a psychiatrist, and is as perplexed and horrified as any of us by the "conversion disorder" and non-existent "evidence base". Thank goodness for doctors like him.