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Showing Original Post only (View all)We failed her. Big time. Boston Children’s was experimenting on Justina Pelletier, [View all]
Last edited Wed Jul 2, 2014, 09:31 PM - Edit history (11)
and most progressives got snowed by the Harvard docs. We listened to the Harvard docs and the social workers who thought the parents were "rude" -- for fighting back -- and we failed Justina.
And so did the liberal media" which for the most part ignored her case. It has come out now that the teenager had pneumonia twice while she was under the care of the State of Massachusetts for her somatic disorder. I bet you didnt know that. It wasnt on MSNBC.
Why did most progressives and the liberal media fail to champion Justina Pelletier? The right-wing wants to use cases like this -- why do we let them? Why do we leave the field completely wide open? We care just as much about the safety and health of children as they do -- I would argue that we care a lot more. So why did progressives -- in politics, in the media, and in the public -- largely sit by while Justina was being held without treatment for more than a year?
I think the reason we let the right wing take the reins on this case was simple. The first person the family turned to was their parish priest, and from that point they got support from various religious groups, who were connected to right-wing figures who correctly saw what was going on and worked hard to free her. Since right-wing people can NEVER be right about ANYTHING and this was HARVARD, after all many progressives decided that the parents and their right wing associates must be wrong. They decided to trust Boston Childrens and the State of Massachusetts that they were acting in Justinas best interests. And they were not.
The people from Harvard who convinced Massachusetts to make her a ward of the state had a vested interest in her case: they were conducting research in somatoform disorder, and she appeared to fit the bill. Based on a 25 minute interview and a 12 hour hospital stay, they decided that her devastating symptoms were psychological, rather than caused by a physical disease and that the parents were guilty of overmedicalizing her. (I am not saying that these doctors deliberately, and with malice, decided to use this girl for their purposes. I believe that their personal biases unconsciously influenced their diagnosis and that the Children's hospital and the state failed to protect her.)
In making this diagnosis, the Harvard docs refused to speak to the specialist at Tufts University who had been treating her and her older sister for mitochondrial disease for years. Then they got the state to take custody away from her parents and put her in a locked psychiatric ward for more than a year, where they could control every moment of her day and everything she put in her mouth. They withdrew all the medication prescribed by her doctor at Tufts, a top specialist in mitochondrial disease, put her through "behavioral modification," and studied her while she deteriorated. For more than a year. While she got pneumonia twice.
And they could do all this because Massachusetts had a law and Boston Childrens had a policy that allowed wards of the state to be experimented on, even in research with significant risk that carried no benefit for the child.
Yes, you read that right. Even significant risk with no direct benefit.
After 16 months in State custody, she was finally released back to her parents free and clear. Her parents care of her is not being supervised by either Massachusetts or her home state of Connecticut because it turns out they had done nothing wrong. Connecticut always refused to get involved and never even opened a file on her because they had no evidence other than what Massachusetts was claiming to them about overmedicalizing that would support their own investigation.
The judge who had been involved had placed a gag order on everybody involved, but the father finally decided to break it last fall and go public. Unfortunately, other than the Boston Globe, which ran detailed and supportive investigative pieces on her case, and the Hartford Courant, most of the media coverage was dominated by right-wing and religious organizations. And in this case Fox news got it right.
The left-wing got snowed by Harvard , and possibly by the fact that this was a blue state. Too many progressives who would otherwise care about this sort of thing decided there must be something wrong with the parents. We just didnt know the whole story, people said. And the father was so rude to the social workers! We needed to trust the hospital and the social workers that they were doing the right thing.
Well, they werent. And thats why Washingtons Representative Jim McDermott, a psychiatrist himself (and one of the co-chairs of the Foster Youth committee) is among a group of four in the house (two Democrats and two Republicans) to introduce a bill that would prevent this from ever happening again. No state will ever be allowed to experiment on its wards in research that involves risk and carries no direct benefit to them.
It boggles my mind that this has been legal anywhere but it has. In 2014. In liberal Massachusetts.
Most of the "liberal media" got snowed by the fancy docs at Harvard. The Boston Globe, and the Hartford Courant did not. Fox News didn't either. A hat tip to Fox, for getting it right for once.
Guardian LV: http://www.donotlink.com/framed?53149
Rep. Jim McDermott highlighted the strength and bravery of Justina Pellier and her family, calling it a guidestar for the nation. It was their responsibility to make sure children were not the subject of risky medical experimentation, he said and for this reason he was working with the other three reps to pass Justinas law as quickly as possible.
(Rep. McDermott, D-Washington, is one of the most liberal members of the house and a psychiatrist himself.)
Justina speaks out: (This interview is from the Blaze because I can't find an interview with Justina on a more reputable site.)
The Blaze: http://www.donotlink.com/framed?53147
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The Boston Globe investigation:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/15/justina/vnwzbbNdiodSD7WDTh6xZI/story.html