Pelletier Family Gives Powerful Testimony in Support of Justina’s Law

[natasa778]

Today Justina’s father Lou and elder sister Jennifer returned to Massachusetts to testify at a public hearing at the State House in support of House Bill 1469 – An Act called Justina’s Law ...

Committee Chair Senator William Brownsberger (D) of Belmont invited testimony from Lou Pelletier who testified eloquently about the sheer horror his daughter and his family went through for 17 months at the hands of DCF and Harvard’s Children’s Hospital and the purgatory they were suddenly cast into by Dr Alice Newton without any recourse. Lou also testified that the parents were stripped of their family rights because Harvard’s Children’s Hospital disagreed with a diagnosis made by Tufts Medical Center. The parents were condemned as abusive because they believed Tufts’ diagnosis was correct and that Harvard’s was incorrect. They lost their child for that effrontery.

Senator Brownsberger then invited testimony from Jennifer Pelletier who gave wrenching testimony about what her little sister went through at the hands of the Government and Harvard’s Children’s Hospital.

http://valleypatriot.com/pelletier-family-gives-powerful-testimony-in-support-of-justinas-law/

 

[Snowdrop]

I hope this unfortunate saga that lead to this law gives Boston (Harvard) Children's Hospital a very big black eye.
The hospital has parlayed their prestige as an institution into a little fiefdom seemingly beyond accountability.
Harvard should have to work very hard to regain public trust. Although I'd be surprised if any one involved even got so much as a wrist slap.
I hope that the news of what happened to Justina gets a lot of press. Good for the Pelletier family and their perseverance.

 

[Gingergrrl]

Agreed and I used to work for a hospital (not Harvard!) that could get away with unbelievable nonsense based on their reputation which is very scary.

 

[valentinelynx]

I just looked up the details of this story. The Tufts doctor's diagnosed Justina with mitochondrial disease. This is not a controversial disease, unlike some we know... The Harvard doctor claimed that "mitochondrial disease did not exist" and that Justina had, you guessed it: Somatoform Disorder! The Harvard (Boston Children's) team just about killed her by locking her in a psych ward without treatment, schooling, parental visits, etc.

Something must be done about the embarrassing, medieval notion of "Somatoform Disorder"!!! While medical boards shut down good doctors for treating Lyme disease or chronic pain, bad doctors try to kill people with psychiatry and get applauded for it. I am ashamed of my profession.

 

[alex3619]

Something must be done about the embarrassing, medieval notion of "Somatoform Disorder"!!! While medical boards shut down good doctors for treating Lyme disease or chronic pain, bad doctors try to kill people with psychiatry and get applauded for it. I am ashamed of my profession.

Agreed. This is a huge blight on the entire medical profession for allowing it to continue. I think one solution is to create "alternative psychiatry" and split this stuff off from medicine. It has no placed in evidence based and scientific treatment modalities. This applies to much of psychiatry, but definitely not all of psychiatry. How to split psychiatry into sound modalities and unsound modalities is a serious issue, one which the APA for example simply does not address ... look at DSM5.

 

[Gingergrrl]

@alex3619 Believe it or not there are integrative and alternative psychiatrists and I have both worked with them in my former career and been a patient of one of them.

When I first got sick with ME in 2013, I saw one b/c my case was mild at that time compared to very severe now. He told me immediately (after thorough history and assessment) that my fatigue, tachycardia, GI issues, etc, were not depression and he prescribed no psychotropics and gave me a regime of all supplements.

He told me I needed to drink salt water for the autonomic issues and all the terms he used like CFS, POTS, low blood volume, leaky gut, thyroid issues, turned out to be true. He also referred me to a very good Endo who I still see.

Sadly he moved away and no longer in my city. My only fault with him was that he recommended doses of supplements that were way too high for me and I got some bad reactions and did not tolerate them (like a multivitamin with about 50 ingredients in it, etc.)

But he was phenomenal overall and treated both traditional psychiatric illness like Bipolar d/o and schizophrenia to someone like me with purely natural supplements etc. But docs like him are rare. He was also expensive and did not take insurance. I loved though that if he did not know something he would just say so.

Sorry for long post but wanted to share that there are a few great psychiatrists out there, just not easy to find!

 

[alex3619]

I am aware there is a huge range of psych services, and some are much better than others. Some even use antivirals. In general though the medical profession is super quiet about the use of Freudian psychobabble to treat very sick and distressed patients, and the same for other new age unproven treatments. and diagnostic categories. There are a few psychologists and some psychiatrists I have a lot of time for. That is about individuals.

When there has to be legislation to regulate medicine then you know there is a problem. The whole controversy about psych is very very old now, more than a century, and its resisted most attempts at recognizing the issues. Doctors once fought hard to stop this stuff, but then Freud won the war and psychoanalysis became part of mainstream medicine.

 

[Gingergrrl]

Agreed 100% and the doctor I mentioned is rare and most just see the patient for five min and prescribe meds.

 

[Sidereal]

There are good psychiatrists like there are good people in every profession. But the profession as a whole endorses somatoform diagnoses and human rights abuses that follow from those diagnoses. This Satanic ritualistic abuse of children and adults at the hands of doctors who worship at the altar of psychosomatic medicine has to stop.

 

[msf]

Psychiatry is a house built on sand.