kalikshama
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quote:
But I've also heard that BCH has removed other children from their parents for Munchausen by proxy (which seems weird because that is a fairly are thing and very difficult to diagnose, and very easy to misdiagnose.)
I'm convinced a former gf of mine was making her child sick. He got ill every time her boyfriend left her and well when he returned.
Here are bits from a very in depth article about Justina's situation:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/15/justina/vnwzbbNdiodSD7WDTh6xZI/story.html
...Doctors disagree all the time over the diagnosis and treatment of patients, but Justina’s story reveals a new and remarkably contentious frontier in pediatric medicine. A difference of opinion among doctors at separate Boston hospitals escalated with stunning speed. Just a few days after Justina had arrived at Children’s on Sunday, Feb. 10, doctors were urging state child-protection officials to take emergency custody of the girl from her parents so that Justina would remain safe and get the care the hospital’s team recommended.
These cases are rare, but not as rare as one might think. In just the last 18 months, Children’s — which given its reputation attracts many of the toughest cases from across the Northeast — has been involved in at least five cases where a disputed medical diagnosis led to parents either losing custody or being threatened with that extreme measure. Similar custody fights have occurred on occasion at other pediatric hospitals around the country.
It happens often enough that the pediatrician who until recently ran the child protection teams at both Children’s and Massachusetts General Hospital said she and others in her field have a name for this aggressive legal-medical maneuver. They call it a “parent-ectomy.”
Typically in these cases, the child had been diagnosed elsewhere with one of several relatively new disorders that are complex, poorly understood, and controversial.
The child’s medical record usually contained references to the parents being highly stressed and difficult to handle. And when the parents in most of these cases rejected the suggestion by doctors that the child’s problems were more psychiatric than physical, that sparked the medical team’s concern, paving the way for the call to the state child-protection agency.
In Massachusetts, the Department of Children and Families investigates all child abuse and neglect complaints and is supposed to be a neutral referee assessing the charges against the parents. Many parents and their advocates complain, however, that the state agency, because of its lack of in-house medical expertise and its longstanding ties with Children’s, is overly deferential to the renowned Harvard teaching hospital.
There can be no denying that Children’s doctors and nurses provide remarkable care on a daily basis, saving lives and advancing medicine. And they’re legally obligated to report any suspicions of child abuse. But given its well-earned reputation, Children’s can sometimes be a difficult institution to challenge.
...Boston Children’s Hospital officials, citing patient confidentiality, declined to discuss individual cases or allow any of their doctors to do so. However, a spokesman noted that hospital clinicians have extensive experience diagnosing and treating patients for mitochondrial disease, among other rare disorders. To better understand the recent cases of alleged medical child abuse, the Globe obtained extensive medical, court, and investigative records, including scores of documents that describe Justina’s care.
Pediatrician Carole Jenny and her psychiatrist husband coined the term “medical child abuse” some time ago, but it has taken hold in the medical world just in the last few years. It has become a controversial catch-all for a wide spectrum of cases in which health care providers deem parents acting against the best interests of their child in a medical setting.
Many such parents used to be diagnosed with Munchausen by Proxy, a psychiatric condition in which they seek attention from the medical community by exaggerating, fabricating or even inducing a child’s illness. The new term avoids references to parental motivation.
Noted child-protection specialists say signs of medical child abuse, whatever the motivation of the perpetrator, must be taken seriously.
“If the parent won’t work with you, and you really think the child is suffering, you’ve got to act,” said Jenny, who until recently ran the child protection team at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence.
...In the first days after Justina’s admission, records show, [pediatrician Dr. Alice] Newton [who runs the Children's child protection team] consulted with psychologist Bujoreanu and other Children’s colleagues involved in her care. As Newton later explained to state investigators, she found much that troubled her: how Linda demanded that Justina be given a naso-gastric, or NG, feeding tube for nourishment, when hospital staff felt the girl needed to be given a chance to eat on her own. How Justina appeared to act more impaired when her mother was at her side. And how Linda and Lou had moved Justina around to multiple hospitals, drawing frequent complaints about their difficult personalities.
Finally, Newton was troubled by Justina’s many medical interventions, particularly the cecostomy “button” surgery she had undergone at Tufts in 2012, which struck her and others at Children’s as severe and unnecessary.
< Message edited by kalikshama -- 2/27/2014 6:20:31 PM >
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Parents rights - 
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