Very sad news from Denmark:

[Little Bluestem]

After the meeting, I wrote to Karina’s guardian, telling him about ME and some of Karina’s history. I
hope he will take his job seriously by reading all the material in the case and do what is best for Karina. I don’t know if I will receive information about Karina in the future.

I hope the guardian is not under the thumbs of NBC and PF. {I was going to give my own idea of what those initials stand for, but was afraid I would get in trouble with the moderators.}

 

[COACH]

Here is the latest update. You are killing me!

http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/86982676/2146474059/name/You are killing me 19-6-13.pdf

Appalling and outrageous!

What can we do?

C.G.

There are some things we can do to help. Although it feels like precious little considering all this young woman is going through. The petition links are listed previously. They are on ipetition, change.org, and causes.com.
Something that is available now is a template for writing Denmark officials. Rebecca Hansen was consulted in writing this template and she provided the addresses. You can find the template and addresses here:
Template
https://www.facebook.com/notes/just...emplate-for-denmark-officials/531198773608251
Addresses
https://www.facebook.com/notes/just...r-the-letter-writing-campaign/531228780271917
If anyone wants a copy of the template and addresses rather than having to go through Facebook, please let me know and I am happy to post them here.

It would be great if more bloggers would cover this. If you have a blog or just have a favorite one you read please ask them to cover this situation. Raising awareness and getting journalists involved are both important to Karina's case.

 

[COACH]

It is appalling to me that there can even be laws governing a person's....personhood. Who gave doctors the authority to make life-altering decisions for another human being, without, or worse against, their consent; decisions regarding their body, their mind, their will?
I cannot accept that these two false "authorities" can hold this young woman against her will and against that of her family and counsel.

When did doctors become all-knowing power figures who can enforce their favorite personal ideologies on patients--who by the way didn't even chose them as doctors in the first place?

Unless she is literally under lock and key I would hope her family would lose the fear of whatever so-called repercussions (social? legal?) and just go get her. Then the idiotic system can piss-contest all they want whilst Karina is safe at home.

It is horrifying that all this is occurring to a *severely ill* person, *because* she is ill, at the hands of people who have decided that it is up to *them* what kind of ill she is. Totally horrifying.

It is horrifying. Her family has made attempts to see Karina and they are not allowed to see her. When they took Karina away her mother was physically held back by police. Karina had given her parents power of attorney but now the government has given guardianship to someone else. It is scary to see how one person's rights have been so effectively stripped away.

 

[alex3619]

She would probably be in a secure psychiatric wing. To get in through atypical means would require violating the law, and that would work against the parents.

This whole thing goes back to nineteenth century insane asylums. You deal with crazy people by having someone lock them away. Unfortunately this was often abused. Why commit murder when you can have someone committed? These days the kinds of psychiatric diagnoses used usually require that they make a claim of potential harm to the patient if they are not committed.

This is medical opinion, it doesn't have to have a factual basis. This entire area of psychiatry needs to have all legal privilege removed. Its absurd this stuff is given the same weight in law as a diagnosis of heart failure or cancer. Nearly all psychogenic medicine is just made up, much (most?) of it has been resoundingly disproved, and most of the rest is looked at with scepticism by many. The "cure" rate is abysmal too: way out medical quackery has better cure rates. In short there is no good evidence that any of this should have medical validity, and it clearly has no scientific validity. To therefore grant it legal validity is a perversion of justice.

 

[COACH]

In the US they can present a writ of habeus corpus, requiring them to present Karina to the holder of the writ. Is something similar possible in Denmark? Does anyone know? At that point they can take her away if they have a court order saying they can do so. If these things done to Karina are really against Danish law, then it should be possible. However its likely to be a legal nightmare, and very expensive for the family.

It is a legal nightmare! Unfortunately the psychiatrists had time to plan this. They used laws to help them remove Karina and continue to hold her. They used the law to have someone appointed as Karina's guardian so she is not in charge of her own treatment any longer.

 

[alex3619]

It is a legal nightmare! Unfortunately the psychiatrists had time to plan this. They used laws to help them remove Karina and continue to hold her. They used the law to have someone appointed as Karina's guardian so she is not in charge of her own treatment any longer.

My point is laws can be fought by enforcing other laws. It then becomes a legal nightmare for the psychiatrists. However this is not a cheap path to follow, such legal action is typically very expensive.

 

[COACH]

My point is laws can be fought by enforcing other laws. It then becomes a legal nightmare for the psychiatrists. However this is not a cheap path to follow, such legal action is typically very expensive.

I agree. I think it would be good if a human rights lawyer would get involved pro bono.

 

[Valentijn]

Is any sort of protest in the works?

 

[Little Bluestem]

Would Amnesty International help? Their Individuals at Risk Urgent Action Network “provides a rapid response to critical human rights situations as they arise. Information is gathered daily and sent out to thousands of people who immediately compose letters, emails, and faxes to government officials or others with the power to halt the abuse.”

 

[leela]

Alex said:

This is medical opinion, it doesn't have to have a factual basis. This entire area of psychiatry needs to have all legal privilege removed. [.....] In short there is no good evidence that any of this should have medical validity, and it clearly has no scientific validity. To therefore grant it legal validity is a perversion of justice.

I totally agree! Well said!! It is completely perverse. And in fact I do not personally believe that a medical diagnosis of cancer or heart disease warrants any sort of legal privilege over a patient either. A person ought to have *total* control over what happens to their person. Just because they become ill they hand over their civil and human rights? I think not.

It is a terrible precedent to sit by and let these so-called "authorities" randomly decide one is "mentally ill" and thus now subject the person to arbitrary reassignment of personal sovereignty. Where then will the line be drawn? Non-mainstream views? Political dissent? Eccentric lifestyle? Too many cats? Oops, off you go. Here's your new "guardian." Have a nice day.

It's the new Thought and Behaviour Police. Orwell and Atwood Jamboree.

 

[leela]

Would Amnesty International help? Their Individuals at Risk Urgent Action Network “provides a rapid response to critical human rights situations as they arise. Information is gathered daily and sent out to thousands of people who immediately compose letters, emails, and faxes to government officials or others with the power to halt the abuse.”

Thank you, Bluestem, I have just written to them.

 

[alex3619]

I totally agree! Well said!! It is completely perverse. And in fact I do not personally believe that a medical diagnosis of cancer or heart disease warrants any sort of legal privilege over a patient either. A person ought to have *total* control over what happens to their person. Just because they become ill they hand over their civil and human rights? I think not.

It is a terrible precedent to sit by and let these so-called "authorities" randomly decide one is "mentally ill" and thus now subject the person to arbitrary reassignment of personal sovereignty. Where then will the line be drawn? Non-mainstream views? Political dissent? Eccentric lifestyle? Too many cats? Oops, off you go. Here's your new "guardian." Have a nice day.

It's the new Thought and Behaviour Police. Orwell and Atwood Jamboree.

Doctors can however testify as to cancer or heart disease. My point is they cannot reliably testify about psychogenic illness. Its always unproven opinion.

Russia had a long history of putting dissidents in psychiatric institutions. The kind of abuse we are seeing in ME has a long history in psychiatry. Nobody seems to care about psychiatric abuse though. There is a very very long history of ignoring it, particularly by the medical profession.

 

[Nielk]

If somehow, they could get the media to cover this and let the world know of this inhuman injustice being perpetrated, I think that it could make a major difference.

 

[leela]

My point is they cannot reliably testify about psychogenic illness. Its always unproven opinion.

Oh Alex, I totally understood your point. I was just going off on my soapbox about personal sovereignty which is a sore point for me. It's bad enough to have that threatened as a healthy person, but a vulnerable severely ill person? It makes my blood boil.

I think psychiatry has seen its day and doctors like those in this case may be going to any lengths to stave off the death rattle. Kidnapping and abusing a young woman to perform their experiment to try and prove their pet theories looks like criminal activity to me, no matter how many letters you have after your name. They are the ones the law should be going after. I am sickened by this.

 

[alex3619]

leela , there are signs that much of psychiatry, and especially psychogenic medicine, began serious decline as far back as the 1970's. The whole BPS model was proposed as a way to revitalize psychogenic medicine. Like many other things in psychogenic medicine it relies on deliberate confusion of terms for pursuasion purposes, i.e. propaganda. So BPS=psychosomatic, functional=psychosomatic, normal=up to moderately disabled, recovered=may have made subjective improvement, and so on. In this case though the primary aim is not to deceive patients, but to deceive the medical community. This is what they do, what I don't know is if most who promote these views are fully aware of this.

I agree that personal soveriegnty is critical. Its good to know that there was a court ruling recently (USA?) that genes cannot be patented.

 

[Nielk]

What I don't understand alex3619, is that are these psychiatrist so hard up to obtain patients that they would fabricate a diagnosis and pull rank with a person's life just to gain more customers? (oops...I mean patients)

 

[leela]

I suspect these doctors grandiosely believe they are going to "turn this girl around" and enjoy some kind of glory-filled triumph in the medical community. I don't think they understand at all that the price of their little stab at notoriety could be this woman's very life. I certainly hope not!! Get her out!! Get them stricken from the medical registry!

alex3619 Yes, it is good news about the ban on patenting non-synthetic human genetic material.
However, at the same time, we have pending legislation mandating involuntary transvaginal ultrasounds; a new ruling allowing the collection by police of DNA if you are arrested; and a 1917 Espionage Act being used to make you a felony criminal just for pointing out where criminal activity is ongoing in government circles.....ugh don't get me started.

Sorry, still on my soapbox about the inborn sovereignty we all come in with, and the hideous trampling of it that appears to be so prevalent right now. Karina's case is just such a tragically horrid, cruel, and unnecessary example of this kind of overreach.

Since Karina is not posing a "threat" to anyone or anything, I do not understand why these doctors are not immediately arrested for fraud, kidnapping, medical abuse, emotional abuse, and aggravated assualt.

 

[Nielk]

Since Karina is not posing a "threat" to anyone or anything, I do not understand why these doctors are not immediately arrested for fraud, kidnapping, medical abuse, emotional abuse, and aggravated assualt.

You have "read" my mind.

 

[alex3619]

What I don't understand alex3619, is that are these psychiatrist so hard up to obtain patients that they would fabricate a diagnosis and pull rank with a person's life just to gain more customers? (oops...I mean patients)

Its hard to say whether there is deliberate fabrication. There is deliberate obfuscation though, and the use of pursuasive rhetoric with no real substance instead of evidence and reason. Like the claim to these approaches being "evidence" based. I think this claim is wrong and deceptive. Its not about more customers though .... there are already not enough psychiatrists out there ... though of course this might not be true for psychogenic medicine. Doctors who practice that might be finding themselves increasingly irrelevant. They need a new patient base because what they do has become increasingly discredited and marginalized.

 

[alex3619]

You have "read" my mind.

Playing Devil's advocate for this paragraph, the claim would have to be something like Karina has a mental illness and by not looking after herself she is a danger to herself. You have to get inside this twisted mindset to realize the logic of it.

However the underlying hypothesis, that Karina has such a mental illness, is unprovable, untestable, experimental medicine at best, delusional at worst, and in violation of the objective evidence. This is every ME patient's worst nightmare, and I feel for Karina. If we can help, we must. In an age when we are capable of measuring objective disability in ME patients, though not determining a cause, this is intolerable, unscientific and a violation of medical ethics.