Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
DR.SOUTHALL STRUCK OFF MEDICAL REGISTER
Dr.Southall struck off Medical Register
This is London.co.uk– Dec 5, 2007
The doctor who destroyed families: Southall struck off for accusing parents of killing their children
Paediatrician David Southall was yesterday struck off the medical register after twice accusing parents of murdering their children.
He claimed one mother drugged and hanged her ten-year-old son with a belt, and he infamously interfered in the case of solicitor Sally Clark, accusing her husband of killing their two sons on the strength of a television documentary.
Yesterday his high-flying career was in ruins after he was barred from medical practice with immediate effect, and castigated for his complete failure to apologise and his "deep-seated attitudinal problems".
"Your misconduct is so serious that it is fundamentally incompatible with your continuing to be a registered medical practitioner," said Dr Jacqueline Mitton, chairman of the General Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Panel.
He blushed slightly and took a long gulp of water as he learned his fate.
Afterwards he remained defiant and unapologetic, saying he was considering an appeal.
"The decisions I took were in the best interests of the children involved," he said.
Southall, 59, has gained international renown for groundbreaking research during his career, which took in the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke, the Royal Brompton in London and hospitals in Wales, the Home Counties, Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley.
He had already been suspended from child protection work in 2004 over his "high-handed intervention" in the Sally Clark case.
He was called before the GMC again over a further series of allegations, which were found proven last month.
Five mothers whom he wrongly accused of deliberately hurting, and in one case killing, their children, gave evidence to the hearing.
Their accounts gave a chilling insight into the consequences of so-called "sleep study" tests that he conducted on 4,500 of his young patients during the eighties and nineties.
Police forces in the Midlands, Wales and London are investigating if children were inadvertently harmed or may have died during his experiments, where patients were allegedly deprived of oxygen and given small amounts of carbon dioxide, ostensibly to find the cause of cot death.
Monday, November 19, 2007
STAPH GERM UNDERMINES BODY'S DEFENCES
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/STAPH_INFECTIONS?SITE=FLDAY&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
STAPH GERM UNDERMINES BODY’S DEFENCES
Associated Press
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID– AP Science Writer- Nov 11, 2:30 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The aggressive antibiotic-resistant staph infection responsible for thousands of recent illnesses undermines the body's defenses by causing germ-fighting cells to explode, researchers reported Sunday. Experts say the findings may help lead to better treatments.
An estimated 90,000 people in the United States fall ill each year from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. It is not clear how many die from the infection; one estimate put it at more than 18,000, which would be slightly higher than U.S. deaths from AIDS.
The infection long has been associated with health care facilities, where it attacks people with reduced immune systems. But many recent cases involve an aggressive strain, community-associated MRSA, or CA-MRSA. It can cause severe infections and even death in otherwise healthy people outside of health care settings.
The CA-MRSA strain secretes a kind of peptide - a compound formed by amino acids - that causes immune cells called neutrophils to burst, eliminating a main defense against infection, according to researchers.
The findings, from a team of U.S. and German researchers led by Michael Otto of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared in Sunday's online edition of the journal Nature Medicine.
While only 14 percent of serious MRSA infections are the community-associated kind, they have drawn attention in recent months with a spate of reports in schools, including the death of a 17-year-old Virginia high school student.
Both hospital-associated and community-associated MRSA contained genes for the peptides. But their production was much higher in the CA-MRSA, the researchers said.
The compounds first cause inflammation, drawing the immune cells to the site of the infection, and then destroy those cells.
The research was conducted in mice and with human blood in laboratory tests.
Within five minutes of exposure to the peptides from CA-MRSA, human neutrophils showed flattening and signs of damage to their membrane, researchers said. After 60 minutes, many cells had disintegrated completely
"This elegant work helps reveal the complex strategy that S. aureus has developed to evade our normal immune defenses," Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, NIAID director, said in a statement. "Understanding what makes the infections caused by these new strains so severe and developing new drugs to treat them are urgent public health priorities."
Dr. George G. Zhanel, a medical microbiologist at the University of Manitoba in Canada, said the study was the first he had seen that identifies the peptides involved.
This shows at least one of the reasons CA-MRSA is able to cause serious problems, Zhanel, who was not part of the research team, said in a telephone interview.
Findings like this may help lead to better treatments, such as ways to neutralize the peptides or to activate the immune system to defeat them, he added.
Dr. Lindsey N. Shaw of the division of cell biology, microbiology and molecular biology at the University of South Florida, also was enthusiastic about the research.
"Specifically identifying a factor which seemingly makes CA-MRSA more pathogenic than HA-MRSA is a real find," Shaw, who was not part of the research group, said via e-mail. The "molecules identified in the study are indeed novel."
Zhanel noted that while hospital-based MRSA seemed to concentrate on "sick old people," the community-based strain can break out in on sports teams, prisons, cruise ships and other places where people are not necessarily sick or have weakened immune systems.
In a worrisome development, he noted that the more aggressive strains have started appearing in hospitals.
Dr. Clarence B. Creech, an assistant professor of pediatric infectious disease at Vanderbilt University, said every time scientists find a new way that staph uses to make people sick, "we open up the field of developing new vaccine targets and new drug targets."
"This is one of the papers we can look to as we develop new vaccines and drugs," Creech, who was not part of the research team, said in a telephone interview.
The National Institutes of Health, the German Research Council and the German Ministry of Education and Research funded the research.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Drug-Resistant Staph Deaths May Pass AIDS
Drug-Resistant Staph Deaths May Pass AIDS
Associated Press
By LINDSEY TANNER – Oct 16, 2007
CHICAGO (AP) — More than 90,000 Americans get potentially deadly infections each year from a drug-resistant staph "superbug," the government reported Tuesday in its first overall estimate of invasive disease caused by the germ.
Deaths tied to these infections may exceed those caused by AIDS, said one public health expert commenting on the new study. The report shows just how far one form of the staph germ has spread beyond its traditional hospital setting.
The overall incidence rate was about 32 invasive infections per 100,000 people. That's an "astounding" figure, said an editorial in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, which published the study.
Most drug-resistant staph cases are mild skin infections. But this study focused on invasive infections — those that enter the bloodstream or destroy flesh and can turn deadly.
Researchers found that only about one-quarter involved hospitalized patients. However, more than half were in the health care system — people who had recently had surgery or were on kidney dialysis, for example. Open wounds and exposure to medical equipment are major ways the bug spreads.
In recent years, the resistant germ has become more common in hospitals and it has been spreading through prisons, gyms and locker rooms, and in poor urban neighborhoods.
The new study offers the broadest look yet at the pervasiveness of the most severe infections caused by the bug, called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. These bacteria can be carried by healthy people, living on their skin or in their noses.
An invasive form of the disease is being blamed for the death Monday of a 17-year-old Virginia high school senior. Doctors said the germ had spread to his kidneys, liver, lungs and muscles around his heart.
The researchers' estimates are extrapolated from 2005 surveillance data from nine mostly urban regions considered representative of the country. There were 5,287 invasive infections reported that year in people living in those regions, which would translate to an estimated 94,360 cases nationally, the researchers said.
Most cases were life-threatening bloodstream infections. However, about 10 percent involved so-called flesh-eating disease, according to the study led by researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There were 988 reported deaths among infected people in the study, for a rate of 6.3 per 100,000. That would translate to 18,650 deaths annually, although the researchers don't know if MRSA was the cause in all cases.
If these deaths all were related to staph infections, the total would exceed other better-known causes of death including AIDS — which killed an estimated 17,011 Americans in 2005 — said Dr. Elizabeth Bancroft of the Los Angeles County Health Department, the editorial author.
The results underscore the need for better prevention measures. That includes curbing the overuse of antibiotics and improving hand-washing and other hygiene procedures among hospital workers, said the CDC's Dr. Scott Fridkin, a study co-author.
Some hospitals have drastically cut infections by first isolating new patients until they are screened for MRSA.
The bacteria don't respond to penicillin-related antibiotics once commonly used to treat them, partly because of overuse. They can be treated with other drugs but health officials worry that their overuse could cause the germ to become resistant to those, too.
A survey earlier this year suggested that MRSA infections, including non-invasive mild forms, affect 46 out of every 1,000 U.S. hospital and nursing home patients — or as many as 5 percent. These patients are vulnerable because of open wounds and invasive medical equipment that can help the germ spread.
Dr. Buddy Creech, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, said the JAMA study emphasizes the broad scope of the drug-resistant staph "epidemic," and highlights the need for a vaccine, which he called "the holy grail of staphylococcal research."
The regions studied were: the Atlanta metropolitan area; Baltimore, Connecticut; Davidson County, Tenn.; the Denver metropolitan area; Monroe County, NY; the Portland, Ore. metropolitan area; Ramsey County, Minn.; and the San Francisco metropolitan area.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Friday, July 06, 2007
Two UK terror bombers enquired into US jobs
LONDON (AP)
Two suspects in the failed car bombings in Britain made inquiries about working in the United States, the FBI said Friday. Mohammed Asha and another suspect had contacted the Philadelphia-based Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, as first reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Asha, a Jordanian physician of Palestinian heritage, contacted the agency within the last year, but apparently did not take the test for foreign medical school graduates.
I wonder which US questions were so off-putting to a terrorist
that were not contained in NHS vetting.
1) Are you a total moron? Yes
2) Can you pull the wool over Pat Hewitt’s eyes? Yes.
3) Go to the UK, no questions, and no barriers.
This has happened during the NHS "Best Year Ever"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4935358.stm
Eight Terror suspects linked to NHS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6265500.stm
Overseas doctors as a group are not a terrorist threat. Most make a wonderful contribution to our society. It is a quirk of immigration patterns and Western skill shortages that they have formed the bulk of the latest terrorism detainees. But the event illustrates the kind of groups that may be vulnerable to the lure of terrorism. In this case, sadly, those who were dedicated to preserving human life were transformed into the exact opposite.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
A Day in the Life of a Cell
Organelles collect and deliver, leaving their footprints
through the molecular gel. A ribosome formulates
proteins while floating in the bisque, and binds
itself to the membrane of a nucleus.
Mitochondria dynamos clone themselves
by binary fission, elongating and splitting in two.
Kinesins and dyneins walk along microtubules,
waving their cargo overhead like helium balloons.
Chloroplasts reap solar energy in chlorophyll
cells that keep plants green and lush.
~~Coral~~
The first in a planned series of animations for Harvard University's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, "The Inner Life of the Cell" takes undergrads beyond textbooks and vividly illustrates the mechanisms that allow a white blood cell to sense its surroundings and respond to an external stimulus. This animation explores the different cellular environments in which these communications take place.
IF THE ABOVE VIDEO FAILS TO LOAD THERE IS A LINK HERE:
http://aimediaserver.com/studiodaily/videoplayer/?src=harvard/harvard.swf&width=640&height=520
through the molecular gel. A ribosome formulates
proteins while floating in the bisque, and binds
itself to the membrane of a nucleus.
Mitochondria dynamos clone themselves
by binary fission, elongating and splitting in two.
Kinesins and dyneins walk along microtubules,
waving their cargo overhead like helium balloons.
Chloroplasts reap solar energy in chlorophyll
cells that keep plants green and lush.
~~Coral~~
The first in a planned series of animations for Harvard University's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, "The Inner Life of the Cell" takes undergrads beyond textbooks and vividly illustrates the mechanisms that allow a white blood cell to sense its surroundings and respond to an external stimulus. This animation explores the different cellular environments in which these communications take place.
IF THE ABOVE VIDEO FAILS TO LOAD THERE IS A LINK HERE:
http://aimediaserver.com/studiodaily/videoplayer/?src=harvard/harvard.swf&width=640&height=520
8000 (NHS) DOCTORS WITHOUT JOBS
Daily_Telegraph_3.3.07
£2 billion has been spent on the training of up to 8,000 doctors who find themselves without a new job under a Government initiative.
It costs £250,000 to train a doctor and the "shambles" is said to be blighting the careers of dedicated young men and women who may now leave the NHS. Many are also saddled with debts of more than £40,000 after funding their training.
BBC_News_4.7.07
Terror Checks Pledge on NHS staff
An immediate review of NHS recruitment will be carried out following the attempted bomb attacks in London and Glasgow, Gordon Brown says.
WHO YA GONNA CALL ??
£2 billion has been spent on the training of up to 8,000 doctors who find themselves without a new job under a Government initiative.
It costs £250,000 to train a doctor and the "shambles" is said to be blighting the careers of dedicated young men and women who may now leave the NHS. Many are also saddled with debts of more than £40,000 after funding their training.
BBC_News_4.7.07
Terror Checks Pledge on NHS staff
An immediate review of NHS recruitment will be carried out following the attempted bomb attacks in London and Glasgow, Gordon Brown says.
WHO YA GONNA CALL ??
THE SMEATONATOR
Comments: Joe Grant, General Secretary, Scottish Police Federation Says: July 3rd, 2007 at 7:32 pm
"
I want to publicly acknowledge the heroic effort that John (Smeaton) and members of the public put in together with police officers to bring these frightening scenes to a quick and safe conclusion.In recognising the bravery of everyone involved it needs special mention and due recognition to John and the other (so far) unnamed people who came to the aid of the police and by doing so resisted the most basic human reaction of running from danger.
To John Smeaton, those other members of the public and to the police officers involved, we thank you on behalf of all 16,000 police officers in this country and I have no doubt that the people of Scotland join me in wanting to shake your hands."
Tourists escaped death and injury at Glasgow airport because of a simple £5 safety valve.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Abandoned Gorilla in Intensive Care
at a children's clinic in Muenster, Germany. Gorillas have a 98 per cent resemblance to humans.
The gorilla, who was in acute danger because of hypothermia and lack of sugar, was wrapped in nappies and doctors attached a drip to inject milk and life-saving medicaments.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Soldier Blown Up in Iraq – Contracted MRSA twice from NHS
Sunday_Mirror_FindArticles
Sunday Mirror, 4 Mar, 2007 by Nick Owens
THE youngest British soldier wounded in Iraq caught the deadly superbug MRSA, TWICE after he was treated on a "filthy" NHS ward in Britain. Private Jamie Cooper, 18, was almost killed when shrapnel from a mortar round ripped through his stomach at his base in Basra. After being airlifted to safety he was treated in a mixed civilian ward at Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham - and after a month was struck down by the killer infection.
Sunday Mirror, 4 Mar, 2007 by Nick Owens
THE youngest British soldier wounded in Iraq caught the deadly superbug MRSA, TWICE after he was treated on a "filthy" NHS ward in Britain. Private Jamie Cooper, 18, was almost killed when shrapnel from a mortar round ripped through his stomach at his base in Basra. After being airlifted to safety he was treated in a mixed civilian ward at Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham - and after a month was struck down by the killer infection.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
DEATHS (UK) FROM MRSA and GAS
DEATHS INVOLVING MRSA and CLOSTRIDIUM DIFFICILE continue to rise -Health Statistics Quarterly Spring 2007
The number of death certificates in England and Wales that mentioned Staphylococcus aureus infection increased each year from 2001 to 2005 – from 1,211 to 2,083, according to new data published by the Office for National Statistics. The percentage of these deaths where staphylococcus aureas was specified as methicillin resistant (MRSA) rose from 61 per cent in 2001 to 78 per cent in 2005.
The mortality rate from MRSA and closely related infections is now double the mortality rate of cervical cancer in the UK
Staphylococcus Aureus Hides
Out In Cells
"A major cause of human and animal infections, Staphylococcus aureus bacteria may evade the immune system's defences and dodge antibiotics by climbing into our cells and then lying low to avoid detection. New research shows how S. aureus makes itself at home in human lung cells for up to two weeks. The bacteria can generate relapsing infections even years after the first episode was apparently cured. S.aureus intracellular survival appears related to its capability to adopt a discrete behaviour instead of actively duplicating. S. aureus then benefits from natural or programmed cell death to re-emerge and trigger another episode of infection, leading to chronicity."
Necrotizing Fasciitis
http://www.nnff.org/nnff_what.htm
There are higher risk groups for contracting NF; however, a person does not need any predisposing conditions to be prone to developing necrotizing fasciitis. It can happen to anyone...young, old, adult, child, any race, any size, healthy or not. No one is out of danger. You do not need to be immunodepressed to get this. The name "flesh-eating-bacteria" is a little sensational, but essentially, this is what the bacteria appear to do. It gets into the body, quickly reproduces, and gives off toxins and enzymes that destroy the soft tissue and fascia, which quickly becomes gangrenous (dead). This gangrenous tissue must be surgically removed to save the life of the patient. The bacteria stealthily hide from the body's innate immune system, allowing it to spread rapidly along tissue planes. NF causes excruciating pain, dangerously low blood pressure, confusion, high fever, and severe dehydration due to the toxins poisoning the body. Unfortunately, NF sometimes occurs beneath the skin with little evidence to explain the victim's symptoms. This results in a great many cases of misdiagnosis.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Sir Roy Meadow, Sally Clark and Angela Cannings
One tabloid has described Roy Meadow as
"The child-snatcher-in-chief"
"In retrospect, the signs were there - that Roy would go too far," said Gillian Paterson, Sir Roy’s former wife, and the mother of his two adult children.
“He found it everywhere. He was over the top. He saw mothers with Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy wherever he looked.”
"I wish that somebody could have said to him: ‘Roy, they’re not everywhere. They do exist, but they’re rare’. I wish somebody could have stopped him."
“I can’t go into details, but I’m sure he has a serious problem with women.
"Angela Cannings said the prison system had destroyed her family bonds and they had found it impossible to rebuild. The severance of the Cannings family on the say-so of one misguided expert witness meant that Jade became much closer to her father than her mother and she suffered from a condition called "separation anxiety".
Sally Clark said that, after her release from prison, she felt uncomfortable joining the other mothers at her surviving son’s school, because there would always be a small proportion of society that prefers to believe the obsessive conduct of expert witnesses that used to pervade the realms of childcare and family Courts
Why an Expert Witness is in the Dock
News.Scotsman.com -Sat. 24 Jan 2004
TRACEY LAWSON
Professor Sir Roy Meadow was credited with discovering Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, a particularly insidious form of child abuse. When he stated that one sudden infant death was a tragedy, two suspicious and three murder, until proven otherwise, his aphorism was dubbed Meadow’s Law.
By appearing as an expert witness at the trials of mothers convicted of murdering their babies, he had helped jail some of the most repulsive criminals our society has produced. Or so we thought.
Over the past 12 months, Sir Roy has seen his professional reputation all but destroyed.
In January last year, Sally Clark walked free from jail when the Appeal Court overturned her convictions in 1999 for murdering her baby sons, Christopher and Harry.
In June, Trupti Patel was acquitted of killing her three youngest babies, Amar, Jamie and Mia.
And last month, the Appeal Court threw out Angela Cannings’ conviction for the murder of her little boys, after 19 months in jail.
Sir Roy acted as an expert witness for the prosecution at all three trials.
Following Mrs Cannings’ release, three Appeal Court judges ruled that a mother should not be convicted in cot death cases on expert medical opinion alone.
Now it is Sir Roy who is in the dock of public and professional opinion: the existence of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy is being questioned; Sir Roy is to be investigated by the General Medical Council, the doctors’ governing body, and Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, is to examine dozens, if not hundreds, of criminal convictions to see if more mothers have been wrongly convicted of killing their children. Sir Roy has been vilified in the press, with one tabloid describing him as "the child-snatcher-in-chief".
Sir Roy’s glittering medical career is shattered. But to some who have known him most of his life, there is a sad inevitability to the situation he is in now.
"In retrospect, the signs were there - in who Roy was - that he would go too far," said Gillian Paterson, Sir Roy’s former wife, and the mother of his two adult children.
"He found it everywhere. He was over the top. He saw mothers with Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy wherever he looked.
"I wish that somebody could have said to him: ‘Roy, they’re not everywhere. They do exist, but they’re rare’. I wish somebody could have stopped him."
As the post mortem examination of the professor’s career begins, questions abound. How many innocent mothers have been jailed because of the evidence he, and doctors who followed his theories, gave at trials which should never have taken place? How many children were wrongly removed from their parents at behind-closed-doors family law hearings, because sheriffs and judges unquestioningly gave credence to his beliefs? How did a man now so vilified rise to become a criminal prosecutor’s expert witness of choice, a position which gave him unparalleled power to shatter so many lives?
And what is the character of this 70-year-old retired doctor, whose name will forever be associated with one of the most serious miscarriages of justice the UK has ever known?
According to his former wife, Sir Roy is a misogynist - a claim which will be seized upon by those who have accused him of conducting a witch hunt against innocent mothers. "I don’t think he likes women," said Ms Paterson, a journalist and writer. "He’s not gay. I don’t think he’s gay. But, although I can’t go into details, I’m sure he has a serious problem with women," she said.
Samuel Roy Meadow was born in June 1933, the son of a chartered accountant from Wigan, Lancashire. His mother was a housewife, but according to those who know Sir Roy, her ambition for her son, and his elder sister, Pauline, was fierce.
"Roy’s parents weren’t wealthy," family sources have said, "but they were incredibly driven for their children to succeed. Doris, especially, was fantastically proud of Roy. But her affection was - I would say - conditional upon him doing well. Roy knew the score. He had to do well. Doris was very judging. Her children were her trophies in this rather dreary, small town."
After studying at Wigan Grammar School and Bromsgrove School, he won a place to study medicine at Worcester College, Oxford, graduating in 1957. While working as a GP in Banbury, Oxfordshire he became interested in child healthcare, and by 1980 he had risen to become the head of paediatrics at St James Hospital, in Leeds - one of the most prestigious posts in his field.
In 1961, Sir Roy had married Gillian MacLennan, the daughter of the British ambassador to Ireland, a match which must have rocketed him up the social ladder. Their children, Julian and Anna, were born in 1963 and 1965 respectively. Now, his former wife says that although popular with colleagues, Sir Roy had no close friends.
She also recalls how he would visit the Anna Freud Centre - Anna was the psychologist daughter of Sigmund Freud - for what she described as a "Bloomsbury-set" chats about child health.
In a bizarre coincidence, sources claim that Sir Roy starred in an amateur production of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, playing the role of the discredited Judge Danforth who is at the heart of the witch-hunt that is the backbone of the play. "Roy confided in me that he found it an uncomfortable part because he identified with this judge more than he was happy with," a source recalled. "I always remember Roy playing that part. He was made for it. He was brilliant."
It was in 1977 that Sir Roy wrote the paper that was to change his life: "Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP): the Hinterlands of Child Abuse."
In the study, Sir Roy described the cases of two sick children whose symptoms had left doctors puzzled.
It transpired that in the first case, a mother had added some of her own blood to her child’s urine sample. In the second, the mother had allegedly poisoned her toddler with excessive salt doses.
Sir Roy wrote that both mothers were suffering from Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy. The new illness took its name from Munchausen’s syndrome - the term coined in 1951 by Dr Richard Asher (the father of the actress Jane Asher), in reference to Baron von Munchausen, the 18th-century German mercenary famed for his fabulous lies.
Munchausen’s syndrome sufferers fake symptoms of illness and will travel from hospital to hospital to secure surgical and medical procedures for illnesses they do not have, simply to get attention.
Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy is a more sinister variant of Munchausen’s syndrome, in which parents - almost always the mother - replicate or even cause symptoms of illness in their children, simply to draw attention to themselves.
His findings were published in the Lancet medical journal, and attracted worldwide attention.
Ms Paterson recalls: "He took a lot of flak at the time. Nobody wanted to believe mothers did that sort of thing. Later [in 1993], he was vindicated with the Beverley Allitt trial (The nurse who murdered four children in her care and harmed a number of others). That’s when they stuck him on a pedestal, made him the number one expert witness in the land, and proceeded to believe everything he said."
But it was in 1989 that Sir Roy coined the now infamous Meadow’s Law, when he wrote in The ABC of Child Abuse: "One sudden infant death is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder until proved otherwise."
It was this phrase, which captured the imagination of public and press when Sir Roy was called as an expert witness for the prosecution at the trial of Mrs Clark.
Mrs Clark was found guilty and jailed, but her conviction was overturned last year, after her husband, Steve, unearthed new evidence that the baby had a life-threatening infection at the time of death. It was Mrs Clark’s case that was to turn the tide against Sir Roy. After more than 20 years as an expert witness, Sir Roy now stands accused of failing to provide a scientific basis for his claims.
Jean Golding, the professor of epidemiology at Bristol University, was originally asked to be a prosecution witness at the trial of Mrs Cannings. But her reading of the pre-trial evidence swung her to the defence.
In court she savaged Sir Roy’s methodology, saying that 81 cases on which he based his outlook did not stand up to scrutiny, because he had no control group. (In fact, Sir Roy has admitted shredding the raw data on which he based his beliefs.)
Prof Golding told a Radio 4 File on Four programme in July 2002 that Sir Roy’s statement "lacked scientific rigour" adding: "I called it stamp collecting ... you pick out the cases that you want to present and then you present them."
The Royal Statistical Society also wrote to the Lord Chancellor stating there was no statistical basis for Sir Roy’s court claim that there was only a one in 73 million chance of Mrs Clark losing two babies in sudden and unexplained circumstances.
Shortly afterwards Mrs Patel was acquitted of murdering her babies - and now Mrs Cannings has seen her conviction overturned.
Presented with a situation of three mothers found innocent, the government has been forced to react, hence Lord Goldsmith’s review. Thousands of other cases dealt with by local authorities are expected to be reviewed.
So how did Sir Roy maintain so much credibility for so long in our supposedly rigorous courts of law?
Dr Lucy Blakemore-Brown, a psychologist from Brunel University who has studied Sir Roy’s work for some time, says juries and judges quite simply trusted a man whom society had rewarded by making him a doctor, professor and knight of the realm. Dr Blakemore-Brown also believes that Sir Roy’s turn of phrase has played a crucial part in his credibility in court.
She says: "One, two, three, ABC ... 73 million to one.... these are phrases a jury can understand amid the foreign language of the court - but why did the judges not realise Sir Roy had no science to back his claims?"
Whatever the questions hanging over Sir Roy now, he has undoubtedly enjoyed widespread respect among his peers. A number of colleagues have jumped to his defence in recent weeks.
Harvey Marcovitch was a paediatrician for more than three decades and is a member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Health Care and a member of the General Medical Council of the UK.
He suggests that a simple case of supply and demand may have helped Sir Roy become a pre-eminent expert witness: there is a limited number of paediatricians; those practising are unlikely to be able to clear two or three weeks of their diary to give evidence at a trial; of those, many will not be experienced or expert; many are reluctant to risk the public scrutiny of a case in which they have no need to get involved.
Dr Marcovitch explains: "You are left with few expert witnesses. Then, if one performs well in court, the lawyers will employ him for their next trial. The word gets round that this guy is good, and he is called again and again. So he become known as the foremost expert witness in his field - it’s sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Dr Marcovitch is in no doubt that Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy exists. He points to a recent study of UK paediatricians carried out by the British Paediatrics Surveillance Unit, which found that doctors were discovering between one and two cases of the syndrome annually per million head of population. He adds: "I do not think you will find a paediatrician who does not believe MSbP exists. But it is rare, and over the years the term was used to describe a wider and wider range of things. For example, Beverley Allitt did not have MSbP as suggested at the time - she was a killer."
It was because of concerns about the increasingly blurred definition of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy that the Royal College officially dropped the term in 2002. It now uses the terms "fabricated" and "induced illnesses".
Sir Roy was not answering the telephone at his home near Leeds, yesterday, where he lives with his second wife, Marianne.
Whatever the GMC and Attorney General’s investigations discover, it will be painful for all involved.
In the past, Sir Roy was applauded for thinking the unthinkable, and he has no doubt rescued some infants from abuse. But far from being a children’s champion, he may have simply championed his own cause - at the expense of truth.
Pivotal evidence now deemed ‘manifestly wrong’ and ‘grossly misleading’
Over the past five years Prof Meadow’s evidence was pivotal in the trials of three women:
• 22 November, 1999: Angela Cannings was arrested and questioned about the death of her four-month-old son.
• 26 November, 1999: Sally Clark is sentenced to life imprisonment for killing her two baby sons in 1996 and 1998. Prof Meadow gave evidence to the effect that any more than three cot deaths in one family could be construed as involving murder.
• 16 April, 2002: Angela Cannings is jailed for life at Winchester Crown Court after being found guilty by a jury of smothering her two sons.
• 29 January, 2003: Sally Clark’s conviction is quashed as the appeal judges condemned Prof Meadow’s claim that the chances of having two cot deaths in one family was 73 million to one as "manifestly wrong" and "grossly misleading", and express concern that key evidence was not put before a jury.
• 12 June, 2003: Trupti Patel is acquitted of killing her three babies. During the case, Prof Meadow gives evidence, and a small group of protesters attempt to distribute leaflets questioning his credibility.
• 10 December, 2003: Angela Cannings is freed after the Court of Appeal overturned the verdict on the ground that the convictions - which were based on Prof Meadow’s research - were "unsafe".
These cot-death convictions are just plain wrong
Today we raise the possibility of an appalling number of miscarriages of justice. Sally Clark’s recorded voice: “I now face the minute-by-minute torture of life imprisonment, knowing I did not harm my little boys.” Paul Sykes: “That sentence is not rigorous. It’s just wrong. You have lost faith in the British judicial system?” - “Absolutely. My faith in the system is just destroyed.”
The discovery of a cot death gene this spring means that innocent mothers who have suffered the unbearable pain of double cot deaths may have been jailed for murders that never actually happened. Recorded voice again: “I’m Sally Clark. I’m 36 years of age. I’m a solicitor. I have been married to Stephen Clark, who is also a solicitor, for nearly 11 years We had three children, all of them boys. Christopher, my first-born, and Harry, my second little boy, are no longer alive. My third son is nearly two-and-a-half years old. I am able to see him, just the two of us, for one wonderful day every month.”
That was the haunting voice of Sally Clark, now in prison serving a double life sentence for the cruellest crime imaginable, murdering her own baby boys, Christopher, aged three months, and Harry, aged two months. She could spend the rest of her life in prison for the double murder she says she did not commit. When she was found guilty in November 99, the papers had a field day. They ran claims that she was a binge drinker, none of which had come before the court. The Sunday Mirror: “Fall from grace for the woman with everything;” the Daily Mail, “Driven by drink and despair, the solicitor who killed her babies;” and the local evening paper, the Manchester Evening News: “Pregnant days after murdering baby son.”
It was a classic media witch-burning. Steve Clark, Sally’s husband, who stood by her: “Reading the newspapers, how they reported her after the conviction you would think Sally Clark was a witch. Well, she isn’t, 90% of what was said in the newspapers was totally and utterly untrue.” Sally’s first child, Christopher, was born in September 96 and died three months later. At the time he was certified to have died naturally from a lung infection. Her second child Harry was born in November 97 and died in January 98; the next month, Sally was arrested for murder. She was accused of smothering baby Christopher and shaking baby Harry to death.
At her trial Professor Sir Roy Meadow told the jury that there was only a one in 73 million chance of Sally having two cot deaths, an event, he said, that would happen once every hundred years. It was a devastating sound-bite and the jury convicted her ten to two. Professor Meadow is the inventor of Munchausen’s by Proxy, the controversial theory that some mothers harm or even murder their babies to seek attention. We asked him to appear on this programme but he declined. He has, however, given a rare interview to an American film maker: “You just have to recognise there are some mothers and fathers who have enormous difficulties, often through no fault of their own, who do terrible things to their children but as a paediatrician you don’t hate them, you hate what has happened to the child. Sometimes it makes me physically sick when I get involved with a case. I’m just not eating. I vomit. I’m so upset.”
Sir Roy has been knighted for his services to the study of child abuse. He was the first president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and is the author of The ABC of Child Abuse, the leading textbook in the area. His mind-set is encapsulated by the following saying, quoted in this book: “One sudden infant death is a tragedy, two is suspicious, and three is murder until proved otherwise. A crude aphorism but a sensible working rule for anyone encountering these tragedies.”You could call “unless proven otherwise two is suspicious and three is murder” Meadow’s Law.
No-one is suggesting that mothers never kill their babies, but Professor Meadow’s crude aphorism is now used as a rule of thumb by doctors, police and social workers. It risks tarring all mothers who have suffered multiple cot deaths as murderers. It presumes guilt, not innocence. And the presumption of guilt kicks in at the very moment a second cot death occurs when an innocent mother would be going through unendurable pain. Mothers like Sue Sale: she lost two babies to cot death in the 1980’s before Meadow’s Law had become established wisdom.. She picked up her baby knowing he was dead, knowing he was the second to die. “I didn’t want to have to let him go because I thought, if I ring people they’re going to try and take him away, and I couldn’t believe that this could have happened again to me. It was the most awful, dreadful, shock.”
The deaths were investigated but Sue Sale was never charged. After all, she had done nothing wrong. Since then the climate has changed dramatically. Professionals are advised, be suspicious and think dirty. Is it possible that today the odds could be stacked against an innocent mother who has suffered two cot deaths but has not harmed her children in any way? In the Sally Clark case the forensic evidence was hotly contested and this was a murder trial where, let us remember, the standard of proof ought to be beyond reasonable doubt. Enter Meadow’s sound-bite of one chance in 73 million for two babies dying naturally. Prosecuting barrister Robin Spencer asked Sir Roy, “So is this right? Not only would the chance be one in 73 million but in addition in these two deaths there are features which would be regarded as suspicious in any event?” And Sir Roy answered: “I believe so.”It was a smoking gun statistic. In one sound bite you had a compelling case against Sally Clark.To get to the figure family circumstances are factored in. A single-parent smoker is more likely to suffer a cot death than a middle class family like Clark’s. So you arrive at a figure of one cot death in 8,500 in a family like Sally’s. The Clarks suffered two deaths. Professor Meadow multiplied 8,500 by 8,500 and arrived at the chance of one in 73 million.
“It is to Probability Theory the equivalent of what to arithmetic would be saying that two plus two equals five” - Dr Stephen Watkins, Director of Public Health, Stockport. He was so troubled by Professor Sir Roy Meadow’s evidence that he wrote a damning critique in the BMJ. “I felt I had to write that. The way Sir Roy Meadow had used statistics was completely wrong. He had calculated the probability of one specified individual having two cot deaths. The actual figure he should have calculated was the probability of some person having two cot deaths.” It may not happen to you, yes, but it will happen to someone. “I’ll give you an example. The probability of me winning the lottery this Saturday is very low. But the probability of somebody winning the lottery this Saturday is quite high. And what Sir Roy is doing is exactly the equivalent of saying that whoever wins the lottery must have committed fraud because of the low probability of that individual winning the lottery.”
Dr Watkins has a vivid memory of where he was when the news broke of Sir Roy’s sound-bite “I was actually having a dinner with three other public health doctors at the time that we heard this figure reported on the television and the reaction of each of the four of us was that this is a misuse of statistics. This is wrong. This is not correct evidence.” Dr Watkins’ is not a lone voice. Peter Donnelly is professor of Statistical Science at Oxford University. He points out that a key issue was whether Sir Roy was right to multiply the risk factors of the two deaths to get to the one in 73 million number. “It is only valid statistically to multiply the numbers if it has been established that whether or not one child dies in a household of cot death is completely independent of whether or not another child dies in the household. In order to present that kind of number in court one should have evidence that establishes that independence.” By independence Professor Donnelly means that for the one in 73 million number to be right the two deaths have to be proved to be wholly unconnected. For example, that there were no environmental factors in common. “It’s just wrong scientifically to multiply those two numbers together unless the independence has been established. If it hasn’t, then it’s at best speculation and depending on the circumstances of the case, possibly extremely misleading. It’s poor science.” How rigorous is it? “Unless the independence has been established, it’s wrong. In that sense it’s not rigorous, it’s just wrong.”
So the Crown’s case contained a hidden contradiction. Sir Roy would have had to assume that the two deaths were not connected but the two deaths were connected . . . so said Professor Meadow to the court. Sir Roy was having his cake and eating it. The defence did not use an expert statistician to challenge Sir Roy’s figure, intent as it was on attacking the forensic evidence. This decision may have cost Sally Clark dear. But how could a distinguished scientist like Sir Roy make such a mistake? Dr Stephen Watkins: “I think he has used techniques which lay beyond his expertise.” Dr Watkins’ article in the British Medical Journal which attacked Sir Roy’s use of statistics was called “Conviction by mathematical error?” Professor Sir Roy Meadow has not replied to the attack. No statistician we have contacted has said that the one in 73 million figure in the way that Sir Roy used it is defensible. The damage to Sally Clark was that it presented to the jury, confronted as it was with a mass of complicated conflicting forensic evidence, a simple but false certainty.
Last October the Court of Appeal turned down Sally Clark’s first attempt to clear her name. The court ruled that the 73 million figure used at the criminal trial was a sideshow. But Five Life Report has been told by a source that one juror has said, “Whatever you say about Sally Clark, you can’t get around the one in 73 million figure.” In May this year the Solicitors’ Tribunal met to decide whether Sally Clark, a convicted double murderer, should be struck off. Normally this would be a rubber stamp This is part of her plea, presented at the tribunal on video tape: “I was advised before my trial that if I put in a plea of infanticide I would probably serve no term of imprisonment. I am where I am today because I could not tell any lies. I did not lie then and I cannot lie now even if it would procure my immediate release.” The solicitors’ tribunal decided only to suspend her. This unique decision reflects growing anxiety about the soundness of her conviction. Others are convinced a great wrong has been done. Frank Lockyer is Sally’s father; he is a retired divisional commander of Wiltshire police. “There is a photograph of her standing there with her mother. There’s a photograph of them both with her first child, Christopher. People who look at photographs and videos of Sally at the time with her children say we don’t want to see any more; the body language of relationships . . . I mean to say, if that woman . . . I can’t tell you . . . could murder that child. It’s ridiculous. I’m sorry, but it’s just ridiculous. You know, she’d have to be a monster. She’s no monster.“
Brian Lowry is emeritus professor of medical genetics and paediatrics at the University of Calgary, Canada. What does he think of Meadow’s Law? “I think that’s frankly wrong, and most misleading and it’s time someone challenged that viewpoint. In transcripts he’s quoted as saying that each death has the characteristics of unnatural causes, which is enhanced by the fact that two deaths have occurred about the same age in one home. Well, that could just as easily be genetic and to quote that in the prosecution, I think, is shocking.” Dr Ian Rushton is a retired paediatric pathologist with 40 years’ experience carrying out autopsies on infants. He was called for the defence in the Sally Clark case. “I feel very uneasy about the problems that mothers who lose two or three babies have at the moment, because they are basically in a situation where they have to prove their innocence by obtaining medical information to counteract a theory. The problem is that there is as present knowledge stands no such evidence.”
Enter the University of Manchester: this year they announced “Cot death gene identified.” Scientists looked at the DNA of 23 babies who died from cot deaths or sudden infant death syndrome - SIDS for short. They compared it to the genetic make-up of normal babies. In some cot death babies they found a common gene. “The microbiology we did finding that babies with cot deaths more likely to have bacteria that produced poisonous substances such as toxins is what actually made us think of particular genes.” Dr David Drucker, Reader in microbiology at Manchester University, and one of the team that tracked down the cot death gene. Dr Drucker has been working on cot deaths for 15 years. The others include Prof. Ian Hutchinson and a husband-and-wife team of scientists who have suffered their own cot-death tragedy. More discoveries will follow. “In terms of applying it to cot death it’s almost as though we had opened a door to a new room and we have really just taken one step inside it at the moment and we’re waiting to explore what is that room.”
What does Dr Drucker think of Meadow’s Law, that unless proven otherwise, two is suspicious and three is murder? “I would say it is really scientifically illiterate, because as a microbiologist in particular I can think of all sorts of diseases connected with bacteria where, if one member of the family is ill, you can’t just assume that for any other member the odds are the same as they were for the first person who was ill. We know from experience that every time there is a flu epidemic, if one person is ill, it is actually more likely that another member of the family would become ill.” So what is the significance of the discovery of a cot death gene on Prof Meadow’s smoking-gun statistic? Professor Lowry: “I think it is absolute rubbish to say the one in 73 million chance because in fact Sally Clark’s second chance might have been as high as one-in-four so the way they misused the statistic is atrocious.” A chance of one-in-four as a statistic is at the extreme end of the scale where both parents carry the cot-death gene, but it is possible. More likely are odds hugely less remote than one in 73 million. The cot death gene provides fresh evidence that speaks not to murder but to innocence. It turns the Sally Clark case inside out; what was black becomes white.
The implications for justice of Manchester University’s breakthrough don’t just stop with Sally Clark. That’s because Prof Sir Roy Meadow testified for the prosecution in many criminal trials and family courts. I asked paediatric pathologist Dr Ian Rushton what happens if Meadow’s Law is wrong. “Well if the theory is wrong, then obviously there would have to be a total rethink and presumably all the past cases would have to be reviewed.”Until now Meadow’s Law is a criminal theory, to which there has been no easy way out. “ From the jury’s point of view there are three things that happen. First of all, there is a mother in the dock; what is she doing there if she didn’t do anything wrong? Secondly, there are two dead babies; the mother cannot deny that. And thirdly there is a learned professor who says either these deaths were not natural or they are murder. Now that effectively shifts the burden of proof straight on to the mother. What I believe the jury’s common-sense reaction is, if she can prove that she did nothing to her babies we’ll let her off; if she can’t she must be guilty.”
How can a mother defend her innocence? “It is medically impossible, absolutely impossible, to prove that a baby has not been smothered. Think about that for a moment. You can never prove that a baby has not been smothered.”Sally Clark is not the only alleged killer-mum who was jailed with the help of evidence of Prof Sir Roy Meadow. Donna Anthony is also serving a double life sentence for murdering her two babies. She is in Durham Prison. She was convicted on forensic and character-witness evidence which again was contested. Donna Anthony, who had an appalling childhood, is no Sally Clark. She is not a solicitor and cut a desperately poor figure in the witness box. Roy Meadow told the jury that there was a one-in-a-million chance of the two babies dying naturally. He testified: “Natural cot death has an incidence now of about one-in-a-thousand. So the chance of natural cot death happening twice in a family is one-in-a-thousand times one-in-a-thousand which is one-in-a-million. It is extraordinarily unlikely, and of course neither of these two deaths fitted the criteria of what most experts would call cot death or sudden infant death syndrome.” The method Sir Roy used to arrive at one-in-a-million is the same as that used in the one-in-73 million number - the difference being that Donna Anthony was a working-class smoker. And that
method is just plain wrong. George Hawkes was Donna Anthony’s solicitor “I still worry about it now, and it’s nearly three years on. that there was not any direct evidence that she had done anything to her children; there was not a single mark on them and pathologists said they couldn’t find any cause of death, and five years before that, that would have been the end of the matter. It’s really only the advent of Prof Meadow coming in and being involved in a number of these cases that Donna Anthony seems to me to have been caught up in a snowball effect where - I don’t want to make light of it - it is almost becoming fashionable to prosecute in these particular situations. It’s a sort of gathering force.“ Five Live Report knows of a third case, but we can’t give any of the details. Prof Sir Roy Meadow’s evidence as well as other testimony led to the family losing all four children to care. Because of a family court gag on the media we cannot interview the parents. We know of many other cases as well.
Susie Sale has followed the Sally Clark case and others very closely, and now champions their cause. She believes that what happened to them happened to her. “I think about her quite often, actually, because I know that there but for the grace of God it could have been me in that situation, and I know how awful I felt losing those boys and what a terrible, terrible thing . . . it’s such a blight on your life; your life is never the same again.” What about this principle which is supposed to be in British justice of reasonable doubt? “I wish we could think they took that into account. There wasn’t any concrete evidence, I think, that says that she actually killed those children.” Because if the one in 73 million statistic is true - “then I killed my children and I know I haven’t. My husband knows I haven’t killed my children, my family, my relatives, the whole town where I live, know it. I know now there was nothing I could have done to prevent what happened. I didn’t miss an illness or whatever. So I’m at peace with myself but I think that if I was in another town, another part of the country, I could have been in that situation.”
For the friends of Sally Clark, the discovery of a cot death gene provides hope. John Batt [the solicitor who represented her before the solicitors’ tribunal]: “Genetics was never a factor at Sally’s trial. The discovery of a new gene in Manchester is entirely new, it is fresh evidence, and it is clearly at a very early stage in its development. I have no doubt that genetics will play a very large part in Sally’s application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.” Five Live Report has put a series of questions to Sir Roy Meadow about his theory, his one-in-73 million sound-bite and Meadow’s Law; he declined to take part in this programme. Had the jury known in the case of Sally Clark that instead of Sir Roy’s evidence that there was a one-in-73 million chance of her babies dying naturally it could conceivably have been one-in-four, would they have convicted her? “If it can happen to us, what chance has an ordinary couple in a council estate got? or a single mother in Brixton got?” If Meadow’s Law is fatally flawed then there has not been one miscarriage of justice but a great number, ruining the lives of dozens of people who have been in prison or had their babies taken from them for nothing more than having the wrong genes. Perhaps Home Secretary David Blunkett might consider this: That the law should approach grieving mothers with a new, crude aphorism: that, in the absence of compelling evidence of murder, one cot death is a tragedy, and two is a tragedy, and three is a tragedy.
"The child-snatcher-in-chief"
"In retrospect, the signs were there - that Roy would go too far," said Gillian Paterson, Sir Roy’s former wife, and the mother of his two adult children.
“He found it everywhere. He was over the top. He saw mothers with Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy wherever he looked.”
"I wish that somebody could have said to him: ‘Roy, they’re not everywhere. They do exist, but they’re rare’. I wish somebody could have stopped him."
“I can’t go into details, but I’m sure he has a serious problem with women.
"Angela Cannings said the prison system had destroyed her family bonds and they had found it impossible to rebuild. The severance of the Cannings family on the say-so of one misguided expert witness meant that Jade became much closer to her father than her mother and she suffered from a condition called "separation anxiety".
Sally Clark said that, after her release from prison, she felt uncomfortable joining the other mothers at her surviving son’s school, because there would always be a small proportion of society that prefers to believe the obsessive conduct of expert witnesses that used to pervade the realms of childcare and family Courts
Why an Expert Witness is in the Dock
News.Scotsman.com -Sat. 24 Jan 2004
TRACEY LAWSON
Professor Sir Roy Meadow was credited with discovering Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, a particularly insidious form of child abuse. When he stated that one sudden infant death was a tragedy, two suspicious and three murder, until proven otherwise, his aphorism was dubbed Meadow’s Law.
By appearing as an expert witness at the trials of mothers convicted of murdering their babies, he had helped jail some of the most repulsive criminals our society has produced. Or so we thought.
Over the past 12 months, Sir Roy has seen his professional reputation all but destroyed.
In January last year, Sally Clark walked free from jail when the Appeal Court overturned her convictions in 1999 for murdering her baby sons, Christopher and Harry.
In June, Trupti Patel was acquitted of killing her three youngest babies, Amar, Jamie and Mia.
And last month, the Appeal Court threw out Angela Cannings’ conviction for the murder of her little boys, after 19 months in jail.
Sir Roy acted as an expert witness for the prosecution at all three trials.
Following Mrs Cannings’ release, three Appeal Court judges ruled that a mother should not be convicted in cot death cases on expert medical opinion alone.
Now it is Sir Roy who is in the dock of public and professional opinion: the existence of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy is being questioned; Sir Roy is to be investigated by the General Medical Council, the doctors’ governing body, and Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, is to examine dozens, if not hundreds, of criminal convictions to see if more mothers have been wrongly convicted of killing their children. Sir Roy has been vilified in the press, with one tabloid describing him as "the child-snatcher-in-chief".
Sir Roy’s glittering medical career is shattered. But to some who have known him most of his life, there is a sad inevitability to the situation he is in now.
"In retrospect, the signs were there - in who Roy was - that he would go too far," said Gillian Paterson, Sir Roy’s former wife, and the mother of his two adult children.
"He found it everywhere. He was over the top. He saw mothers with Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy wherever he looked.
"I wish that somebody could have said to him: ‘Roy, they’re not everywhere. They do exist, but they’re rare’. I wish somebody could have stopped him."
As the post mortem examination of the professor’s career begins, questions abound. How many innocent mothers have been jailed because of the evidence he, and doctors who followed his theories, gave at trials which should never have taken place? How many children were wrongly removed from their parents at behind-closed-doors family law hearings, because sheriffs and judges unquestioningly gave credence to his beliefs? How did a man now so vilified rise to become a criminal prosecutor’s expert witness of choice, a position which gave him unparalleled power to shatter so many lives?
And what is the character of this 70-year-old retired doctor, whose name will forever be associated with one of the most serious miscarriages of justice the UK has ever known?
According to his former wife, Sir Roy is a misogynist - a claim which will be seized upon by those who have accused him of conducting a witch hunt against innocent mothers. "I don’t think he likes women," said Ms Paterson, a journalist and writer. "He’s not gay. I don’t think he’s gay. But, although I can’t go into details, I’m sure he has a serious problem with women," she said.
Samuel Roy Meadow was born in June 1933, the son of a chartered accountant from Wigan, Lancashire. His mother was a housewife, but according to those who know Sir Roy, her ambition for her son, and his elder sister, Pauline, was fierce.
"Roy’s parents weren’t wealthy," family sources have said, "but they were incredibly driven for their children to succeed. Doris, especially, was fantastically proud of Roy. But her affection was - I would say - conditional upon him doing well. Roy knew the score. He had to do well. Doris was very judging. Her children were her trophies in this rather dreary, small town."
After studying at Wigan Grammar School and Bromsgrove School, he won a place to study medicine at Worcester College, Oxford, graduating in 1957. While working as a GP in Banbury, Oxfordshire he became interested in child healthcare, and by 1980 he had risen to become the head of paediatrics at St James Hospital, in Leeds - one of the most prestigious posts in his field.
In 1961, Sir Roy had married Gillian MacLennan, the daughter of the British ambassador to Ireland, a match which must have rocketed him up the social ladder. Their children, Julian and Anna, were born in 1963 and 1965 respectively. Now, his former wife says that although popular with colleagues, Sir Roy had no close friends.
She also recalls how he would visit the Anna Freud Centre - Anna was the psychologist daughter of Sigmund Freud - for what she described as a "Bloomsbury-set" chats about child health.
In a bizarre coincidence, sources claim that Sir Roy starred in an amateur production of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, playing the role of the discredited Judge Danforth who is at the heart of the witch-hunt that is the backbone of the play. "Roy confided in me that he found it an uncomfortable part because he identified with this judge more than he was happy with," a source recalled. "I always remember Roy playing that part. He was made for it. He was brilliant."
It was in 1977 that Sir Roy wrote the paper that was to change his life: "Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP): the Hinterlands of Child Abuse."
In the study, Sir Roy described the cases of two sick children whose symptoms had left doctors puzzled.
It transpired that in the first case, a mother had added some of her own blood to her child’s urine sample. In the second, the mother had allegedly poisoned her toddler with excessive salt doses.
Sir Roy wrote that both mothers were suffering from Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy. The new illness took its name from Munchausen’s syndrome - the term coined in 1951 by Dr Richard Asher (the father of the actress Jane Asher), in reference to Baron von Munchausen, the 18th-century German mercenary famed for his fabulous lies.
Munchausen’s syndrome sufferers fake symptoms of illness and will travel from hospital to hospital to secure surgical and medical procedures for illnesses they do not have, simply to get attention.
Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy is a more sinister variant of Munchausen’s syndrome, in which parents - almost always the mother - replicate or even cause symptoms of illness in their children, simply to draw attention to themselves.
His findings were published in the Lancet medical journal, and attracted worldwide attention.
Ms Paterson recalls: "He took a lot of flak at the time. Nobody wanted to believe mothers did that sort of thing. Later [in 1993], he was vindicated with the Beverley Allitt trial (The nurse who murdered four children in her care and harmed a number of others). That’s when they stuck him on a pedestal, made him the number one expert witness in the land, and proceeded to believe everything he said."
But it was in 1989 that Sir Roy coined the now infamous Meadow’s Law, when he wrote in The ABC of Child Abuse: "One sudden infant death is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder until proved otherwise."
It was this phrase, which captured the imagination of public and press when Sir Roy was called as an expert witness for the prosecution at the trial of Mrs Clark.
Mrs Clark was found guilty and jailed, but her conviction was overturned last year, after her husband, Steve, unearthed new evidence that the baby had a life-threatening infection at the time of death. It was Mrs Clark’s case that was to turn the tide against Sir Roy. After more than 20 years as an expert witness, Sir Roy now stands accused of failing to provide a scientific basis for his claims.
Jean Golding, the professor of epidemiology at Bristol University, was originally asked to be a prosecution witness at the trial of Mrs Cannings. But her reading of the pre-trial evidence swung her to the defence.
In court she savaged Sir Roy’s methodology, saying that 81 cases on which he based his outlook did not stand up to scrutiny, because he had no control group. (In fact, Sir Roy has admitted shredding the raw data on which he based his beliefs.)
Prof Golding told a Radio 4 File on Four programme in July 2002 that Sir Roy’s statement "lacked scientific rigour" adding: "I called it stamp collecting ... you pick out the cases that you want to present and then you present them."
The Royal Statistical Society also wrote to the Lord Chancellor stating there was no statistical basis for Sir Roy’s court claim that there was only a one in 73 million chance of Mrs Clark losing two babies in sudden and unexplained circumstances.
Shortly afterwards Mrs Patel was acquitted of murdering her babies - and now Mrs Cannings has seen her conviction overturned.
Presented with a situation of three mothers found innocent, the government has been forced to react, hence Lord Goldsmith’s review. Thousands of other cases dealt with by local authorities are expected to be reviewed.
So how did Sir Roy maintain so much credibility for so long in our supposedly rigorous courts of law?
Dr Lucy Blakemore-Brown, a psychologist from Brunel University who has studied Sir Roy’s work for some time, says juries and judges quite simply trusted a man whom society had rewarded by making him a doctor, professor and knight of the realm. Dr Blakemore-Brown also believes that Sir Roy’s turn of phrase has played a crucial part in his credibility in court.
She says: "One, two, three, ABC ... 73 million to one.... these are phrases a jury can understand amid the foreign language of the court - but why did the judges not realise Sir Roy had no science to back his claims?"
Whatever the questions hanging over Sir Roy now, he has undoubtedly enjoyed widespread respect among his peers. A number of colleagues have jumped to his defence in recent weeks.
Harvey Marcovitch was a paediatrician for more than three decades and is a member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Health Care and a member of the General Medical Council of the UK.
He suggests that a simple case of supply and demand may have helped Sir Roy become a pre-eminent expert witness: there is a limited number of paediatricians; those practising are unlikely to be able to clear two or three weeks of their diary to give evidence at a trial; of those, many will not be experienced or expert; many are reluctant to risk the public scrutiny of a case in which they have no need to get involved.
Dr Marcovitch explains: "You are left with few expert witnesses. Then, if one performs well in court, the lawyers will employ him for their next trial. The word gets round that this guy is good, and he is called again and again. So he become known as the foremost expert witness in his field - it’s sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Dr Marcovitch is in no doubt that Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy exists. He points to a recent study of UK paediatricians carried out by the British Paediatrics Surveillance Unit, which found that doctors were discovering between one and two cases of the syndrome annually per million head of population. He adds: "I do not think you will find a paediatrician who does not believe MSbP exists. But it is rare, and over the years the term was used to describe a wider and wider range of things. For example, Beverley Allitt did not have MSbP as suggested at the time - she was a killer."
It was because of concerns about the increasingly blurred definition of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy that the Royal College officially dropped the term in 2002. It now uses the terms "fabricated" and "induced illnesses".
Sir Roy was not answering the telephone at his home near Leeds, yesterday, where he lives with his second wife, Marianne.
Whatever the GMC and Attorney General’s investigations discover, it will be painful for all involved.
In the past, Sir Roy was applauded for thinking the unthinkable, and he has no doubt rescued some infants from abuse. But far from being a children’s champion, he may have simply championed his own cause - at the expense of truth.
Pivotal evidence now deemed ‘manifestly wrong’ and ‘grossly misleading’
Over the past five years Prof Meadow’s evidence was pivotal in the trials of three women:
• 22 November, 1999: Angela Cannings was arrested and questioned about the death of her four-month-old son.
• 26 November, 1999: Sally Clark is sentenced to life imprisonment for killing her two baby sons in 1996 and 1998. Prof Meadow gave evidence to the effect that any more than three cot deaths in one family could be construed as involving murder.
• 16 April, 2002: Angela Cannings is jailed for life at Winchester Crown Court after being found guilty by a jury of smothering her two sons.
• 29 January, 2003: Sally Clark’s conviction is quashed as the appeal judges condemned Prof Meadow’s claim that the chances of having two cot deaths in one family was 73 million to one as "manifestly wrong" and "grossly misleading", and express concern that key evidence was not put before a jury.
• 12 June, 2003: Trupti Patel is acquitted of killing her three babies. During the case, Prof Meadow gives evidence, and a small group of protesters attempt to distribute leaflets questioning his credibility.
• 10 December, 2003: Angela Cannings is freed after the Court of Appeal overturned the verdict on the ground that the convictions - which were based on Prof Meadow’s research - were "unsafe".
‘The prosecution lines up their expert witnesses, the defence lines up theirs. If you want to get to the truth, having such an adversarial system, with one set of doctors pitted against the other, is hardly the right way to go about it.'
Meadow told the jury that unexpected deaths - cot deaths - are not caused by any genetic factors. This is just plain wrong. When a baby is born, it is protected by the mother's immune system. As the baby grows, Mum's immune system fades away and the baby's switches in. But if the gene is faulty, then the immune system doesn't kick in - and the baby is prey to any infection going.
Dr David Drucker and his team at Manchester University found the faulty gene in 2001 - or part of it: if a mother has a particular form of the IL-10 gene, then the child is several times more likely to suffer a cot death. Drucker's faulty gene and what Meadow told the Patel jury don't square. One has to be wrong. Drucker told BBC 5Live Report in 2001 that Meadow's Law is 'scientifically illiterate'.
"Dr Williams took post-mortem cultures from the stomach wall, both bronchi, both lungs, the trachea, the throat, and, most importantly, the cerebro-spinal fluid. Staphylococcus aureus was present in all of the sites."
Professor Morris of the University of Lancaster (subsequently) concluded that the possibility of infection arising after death could be excluded, as "Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is normally sterile". The presence of a pathogen is therefore highly significant. There is no evidence that staphylococcal organisms could get into the CSF after death. The fluid contained a number of polymorphs [white blood cells], showing there had been a reaction to the organism and therefore that it was present prior to death."
Professor Morris noted that "overwhelming staphylococcal infection... is a very serious and potentially lethal disease. It can progress so quickly that death occurs suddenly without obvious pre-existing illness. It is a recognised cause of sudden and unexpected death in infancy. This is natural disease." On the basis of the evidence now available, this was the most likely explanation of Harry's death. He emphasised that "no other conclusion could be sustained."
The Clark family sent the new material to Glyn Walters, a retired consultant in chemical pathology. He, too, concluded that Harry's death was due to "a disseminated staphylococcal infection". In fact, in his post-mortem report on Harry, Dr Williams categorically stated: "There is no evidence of acute infection... there is no evidence that this child died as a result of natural disease." In the light of the new material, this is now in doubt.
"The jury were aware Dr Williams's findings were the subject of much criticism," said Michael Mackey, Clark's lawyer. "They never knew he had commissioned tests which showed, at the least, a potential natural cause of death to which he made no reference [in his evidence].
BBC Radio5 Transcript - John Sweeney
15 July 2000 - “73 million to one” - http://portia.org/chapter10/SallyR5.htm
These cot-death convictions are just plain wrong
Today we raise the possibility of an appalling number of miscarriages of justice. Sally Clark’s recorded voice: “I now face the minute-by-minute torture of life imprisonment, knowing I did not harm my little boys.” Paul Sykes: “That sentence is not rigorous. It’s just wrong. You have lost faith in the British judicial system?” - “Absolutely. My faith in the system is just destroyed.”
The discovery of a cot death gene this spring means that innocent mothers who have suffered the unbearable pain of double cot deaths may have been jailed for murders that never actually happened. Recorded voice again: “I’m Sally Clark. I’m 36 years of age. I’m a solicitor. I have been married to Stephen Clark, who is also a solicitor, for nearly 11 years We had three children, all of them boys. Christopher, my first-born, and Harry, my second little boy, are no longer alive. My third son is nearly two-and-a-half years old. I am able to see him, just the two of us, for one wonderful day every month.”
That was the haunting voice of Sally Clark, now in prison serving a double life sentence for the cruellest crime imaginable, murdering her own baby boys, Christopher, aged three months, and Harry, aged two months. She could spend the rest of her life in prison for the double murder she says she did not commit. When she was found guilty in November 99, the papers had a field day. They ran claims that she was a binge drinker, none of which had come before the court. The Sunday Mirror: “Fall from grace for the woman with everything;” the Daily Mail, “Driven by drink and despair, the solicitor who killed her babies;” and the local evening paper, the Manchester Evening News: “Pregnant days after murdering baby son.”
It was a classic media witch-burning. Steve Clark, Sally’s husband, who stood by her: “Reading the newspapers, how they reported her after the conviction you would think Sally Clark was a witch. Well, she isn’t, 90% of what was said in the newspapers was totally and utterly untrue.” Sally’s first child, Christopher, was born in September 96 and died three months later. At the time he was certified to have died naturally from a lung infection. Her second child Harry was born in November 97 and died in January 98; the next month, Sally was arrested for murder. She was accused of smothering baby Christopher and shaking baby Harry to death.
At her trial Professor Sir Roy Meadow told the jury that there was only a one in 73 million chance of Sally having two cot deaths, an event, he said, that would happen once every hundred years. It was a devastating sound-bite and the jury convicted her ten to two. Professor Meadow is the inventor of Munchausen’s by Proxy, the controversial theory that some mothers harm or even murder their babies to seek attention. We asked him to appear on this programme but he declined. He has, however, given a rare interview to an American film maker: “You just have to recognise there are some mothers and fathers who have enormous difficulties, often through no fault of their own, who do terrible things to their children but as a paediatrician you don’t hate them, you hate what has happened to the child. Sometimes it makes me physically sick when I get involved with a case. I’m just not eating. I vomit. I’m so upset.”
Sir Roy has been knighted for his services to the study of child abuse. He was the first president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and is the author of The ABC of Child Abuse, the leading textbook in the area. His mind-set is encapsulated by the following saying, quoted in this book: “One sudden infant death is a tragedy, two is suspicious, and three is murder until proved otherwise. A crude aphorism but a sensible working rule for anyone encountering these tragedies.”You could call “unless proven otherwise two is suspicious and three is murder” Meadow’s Law.
No-one is suggesting that mothers never kill their babies, but Professor Meadow’s crude aphorism is now used as a rule of thumb by doctors, police and social workers. It risks tarring all mothers who have suffered multiple cot deaths as murderers. It presumes guilt, not innocence. And the presumption of guilt kicks in at the very moment a second cot death occurs when an innocent mother would be going through unendurable pain. Mothers like Sue Sale: she lost two babies to cot death in the 1980’s before Meadow’s Law had become established wisdom.. She picked up her baby knowing he was dead, knowing he was the second to die. “I didn’t want to have to let him go because I thought, if I ring people they’re going to try and take him away, and I couldn’t believe that this could have happened again to me. It was the most awful, dreadful, shock.”
The deaths were investigated but Sue Sale was never charged. After all, she had done nothing wrong. Since then the climate has changed dramatically. Professionals are advised, be suspicious and think dirty. Is it possible that today the odds could be stacked against an innocent mother who has suffered two cot deaths but has not harmed her children in any way? In the Sally Clark case the forensic evidence was hotly contested and this was a murder trial where, let us remember, the standard of proof ought to be beyond reasonable doubt. Enter Meadow’s sound-bite of one chance in 73 million for two babies dying naturally. Prosecuting barrister Robin Spencer asked Sir Roy, “So is this right? Not only would the chance be one in 73 million but in addition in these two deaths there are features which would be regarded as suspicious in any event?” And Sir Roy answered: “I believe so.”It was a smoking gun statistic. In one sound bite you had a compelling case against Sally Clark.To get to the figure family circumstances are factored in. A single-parent smoker is more likely to suffer a cot death than a middle class family like Clark’s. So you arrive at a figure of one cot death in 8,500 in a family like Sally’s. The Clarks suffered two deaths. Professor Meadow multiplied 8,500 by 8,500 and arrived at the chance of one in 73 million.
“It is to Probability Theory the equivalent of what to arithmetic would be saying that two plus two equals five” - Dr Stephen Watkins, Director of Public Health, Stockport. He was so troubled by Professor Sir Roy Meadow’s evidence that he wrote a damning critique in the BMJ. “I felt I had to write that. The way Sir Roy Meadow had used statistics was completely wrong. He had calculated the probability of one specified individual having two cot deaths. The actual figure he should have calculated was the probability of some person having two cot deaths.” It may not happen to you, yes, but it will happen to someone. “I’ll give you an example. The probability of me winning the lottery this Saturday is very low. But the probability of somebody winning the lottery this Saturday is quite high. And what Sir Roy is doing is exactly the equivalent of saying that whoever wins the lottery must have committed fraud because of the low probability of that individual winning the lottery.”
Dr Watkins has a vivid memory of where he was when the news broke of Sir Roy’s sound-bite “I was actually having a dinner with three other public health doctors at the time that we heard this figure reported on the television and the reaction of each of the four of us was that this is a misuse of statistics. This is wrong. This is not correct evidence.” Dr Watkins’ is not a lone voice. Peter Donnelly is professor of Statistical Science at Oxford University. He points out that a key issue was whether Sir Roy was right to multiply the risk factors of the two deaths to get to the one in 73 million number. “It is only valid statistically to multiply the numbers if it has been established that whether or not one child dies in a household of cot death is completely independent of whether or not another child dies in the household. In order to present that kind of number in court one should have evidence that establishes that independence.” By independence Professor Donnelly means that for the one in 73 million number to be right the two deaths have to be proved to be wholly unconnected. For example, that there were no environmental factors in common. “It’s just wrong scientifically to multiply those two numbers together unless the independence has been established. If it hasn’t, then it’s at best speculation and depending on the circumstances of the case, possibly extremely misleading. It’s poor science.” How rigorous is it? “Unless the independence has been established, it’s wrong. In that sense it’s not rigorous, it’s just wrong.”
So the Crown’s case contained a hidden contradiction. Sir Roy would have had to assume that the two deaths were not connected but the two deaths were connected . . . so said Professor Meadow to the court. Sir Roy was having his cake and eating it. The defence did not use an expert statistician to challenge Sir Roy’s figure, intent as it was on attacking the forensic evidence. This decision may have cost Sally Clark dear. But how could a distinguished scientist like Sir Roy make such a mistake? Dr Stephen Watkins: “I think he has used techniques which lay beyond his expertise.” Dr Watkins’ article in the British Medical Journal which attacked Sir Roy’s use of statistics was called “Conviction by mathematical error?” Professor Sir Roy Meadow has not replied to the attack. No statistician we have contacted has said that the one in 73 million figure in the way that Sir Roy used it is defensible. The damage to Sally Clark was that it presented to the jury, confronted as it was with a mass of complicated conflicting forensic evidence, a simple but false certainty.
Last October the Court of Appeal turned down Sally Clark’s first attempt to clear her name. The court ruled that the 73 million figure used at the criminal trial was a sideshow. But Five Life Report has been told by a source that one juror has said, “Whatever you say about Sally Clark, you can’t get around the one in 73 million figure.” In May this year the Solicitors’ Tribunal met to decide whether Sally Clark, a convicted double murderer, should be struck off. Normally this would be a rubber stamp This is part of her plea, presented at the tribunal on video tape: “I was advised before my trial that if I put in a plea of infanticide I would probably serve no term of imprisonment. I am where I am today because I could not tell any lies. I did not lie then and I cannot lie now even if it would procure my immediate release.” The solicitors’ tribunal decided only to suspend her. This unique decision reflects growing anxiety about the soundness of her conviction. Others are convinced a great wrong has been done. Frank Lockyer is Sally’s father; he is a retired divisional commander of Wiltshire police. “There is a photograph of her standing there with her mother. There’s a photograph of them both with her first child, Christopher. People who look at photographs and videos of Sally at the time with her children say we don’t want to see any more; the body language of relationships . . . I mean to say, if that woman . . . I can’t tell you . . . could murder that child. It’s ridiculous. I’m sorry, but it’s just ridiculous. You know, she’d have to be a monster. She’s no monster.“
Brian Lowry is emeritus professor of medical genetics and paediatrics at the University of Calgary, Canada. What does he think of Meadow’s Law? “I think that’s frankly wrong, and most misleading and it’s time someone challenged that viewpoint. In transcripts he’s quoted as saying that each death has the characteristics of unnatural causes, which is enhanced by the fact that two deaths have occurred about the same age in one home. Well, that could just as easily be genetic and to quote that in the prosecution, I think, is shocking.” Dr Ian Rushton is a retired paediatric pathologist with 40 years’ experience carrying out autopsies on infants. He was called for the defence in the Sally Clark case. “I feel very uneasy about the problems that mothers who lose two or three babies have at the moment, because they are basically in a situation where they have to prove their innocence by obtaining medical information to counteract a theory. The problem is that there is as present knowledge stands no such evidence.”
Enter the University of Manchester: this year they announced “Cot death gene identified.” Scientists looked at the DNA of 23 babies who died from cot deaths or sudden infant death syndrome - SIDS for short. They compared it to the genetic make-up of normal babies. In some cot death babies they found a common gene. “The microbiology we did finding that babies with cot deaths more likely to have bacteria that produced poisonous substances such as toxins is what actually made us think of particular genes.” Dr David Drucker, Reader in microbiology at Manchester University, and one of the team that tracked down the cot death gene. Dr Drucker has been working on cot deaths for 15 years. The others include Prof. Ian Hutchinson and a husband-and-wife team of scientists who have suffered their own cot-death tragedy. More discoveries will follow. “In terms of applying it to cot death it’s almost as though we had opened a door to a new room and we have really just taken one step inside it at the moment and we’re waiting to explore what is that room.”
What does Dr Drucker think of Meadow’s Law, that unless proven otherwise, two is suspicious and three is murder? “I would say it is really scientifically illiterate, because as a microbiologist in particular I can think of all sorts of diseases connected with bacteria where, if one member of the family is ill, you can’t just assume that for any other member the odds are the same as they were for the first person who was ill. We know from experience that every time there is a flu epidemic, if one person is ill, it is actually more likely that another member of the family would become ill.” So what is the significance of the discovery of a cot death gene on Prof Meadow’s smoking-gun statistic? Professor Lowry: “I think it is absolute rubbish to say the one in 73 million chance because in fact Sally Clark’s second chance might have been as high as one-in-four so the way they misused the statistic is atrocious.” A chance of one-in-four as a statistic is at the extreme end of the scale where both parents carry the cot-death gene, but it is possible. More likely are odds hugely less remote than one in 73 million. The cot death gene provides fresh evidence that speaks not to murder but to innocence. It turns the Sally Clark case inside out; what was black becomes white.
The implications for justice of Manchester University’s breakthrough don’t just stop with Sally Clark. That’s because Prof Sir Roy Meadow testified for the prosecution in many criminal trials and family courts. I asked paediatric pathologist Dr Ian Rushton what happens if Meadow’s Law is wrong. “Well if the theory is wrong, then obviously there would have to be a total rethink and presumably all the past cases would have to be reviewed.”Until now Meadow’s Law is a criminal theory, to which there has been no easy way out. “ From the jury’s point of view there are three things that happen. First of all, there is a mother in the dock; what is she doing there if she didn’t do anything wrong? Secondly, there are two dead babies; the mother cannot deny that. And thirdly there is a learned professor who says either these deaths were not natural or they are murder. Now that effectively shifts the burden of proof straight on to the mother. What I believe the jury’s common-sense reaction is, if she can prove that she did nothing to her babies we’ll let her off; if she can’t she must be guilty.”
How can a mother defend her innocence? “It is medically impossible, absolutely impossible, to prove that a baby has not been smothered. Think about that for a moment. You can never prove that a baby has not been smothered.”Sally Clark is not the only alleged killer-mum who was jailed with the help of evidence of Prof Sir Roy Meadow. Donna Anthony is also serving a double life sentence for murdering her two babies. She is in Durham Prison. She was convicted on forensic and character-witness evidence which again was contested. Donna Anthony, who had an appalling childhood, is no Sally Clark. She is not a solicitor and cut a desperately poor figure in the witness box. Roy Meadow told the jury that there was a one-in-a-million chance of the two babies dying naturally. He testified: “Natural cot death has an incidence now of about one-in-a-thousand. So the chance of natural cot death happening twice in a family is one-in-a-thousand times one-in-a-thousand which is one-in-a-million. It is extraordinarily unlikely, and of course neither of these two deaths fitted the criteria of what most experts would call cot death or sudden infant death syndrome.” The method Sir Roy used to arrive at one-in-a-million is the same as that used in the one-in-73 million number - the difference being that Donna Anthony was a working-class smoker. And that
method is just plain wrong. George Hawkes was Donna Anthony’s solicitor “I still worry about it now, and it’s nearly three years on. that there was not any direct evidence that she had done anything to her children; there was not a single mark on them and pathologists said they couldn’t find any cause of death, and five years before that, that would have been the end of the matter. It’s really only the advent of Prof Meadow coming in and being involved in a number of these cases that Donna Anthony seems to me to have been caught up in a snowball effect where - I don’t want to make light of it - it is almost becoming fashionable to prosecute in these particular situations. It’s a sort of gathering force.“ Five Live Report knows of a third case, but we can’t give any of the details. Prof Sir Roy Meadow’s evidence as well as other testimony led to the family losing all four children to care. Because of a family court gag on the media we cannot interview the parents. We know of many other cases as well.
Susie Sale has followed the Sally Clark case and others very closely, and now champions their cause. She believes that what happened to them happened to her. “I think about her quite often, actually, because I know that there but for the grace of God it could have been me in that situation, and I know how awful I felt losing those boys and what a terrible, terrible thing . . . it’s such a blight on your life; your life is never the same again.” What about this principle which is supposed to be in British justice of reasonable doubt? “I wish we could think they took that into account. There wasn’t any concrete evidence, I think, that says that she actually killed those children.” Because if the one in 73 million statistic is true - “then I killed my children and I know I haven’t. My husband knows I haven’t killed my children, my family, my relatives, the whole town where I live, know it. I know now there was nothing I could have done to prevent what happened. I didn’t miss an illness or whatever. So I’m at peace with myself but I think that if I was in another town, another part of the country, I could have been in that situation.”
For the friends of Sally Clark, the discovery of a cot death gene provides hope. John Batt [the solicitor who represented her before the solicitors’ tribunal]: “Genetics was never a factor at Sally’s trial. The discovery of a new gene in Manchester is entirely new, it is fresh evidence, and it is clearly at a very early stage in its development. I have no doubt that genetics will play a very large part in Sally’s application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.” Five Live Report has put a series of questions to Sir Roy Meadow about his theory, his one-in-73 million sound-bite and Meadow’s Law; he declined to take part in this programme. Had the jury known in the case of Sally Clark that instead of Sir Roy’s evidence that there was a one-in-73 million chance of her babies dying naturally it could conceivably have been one-in-four, would they have convicted her? “If it can happen to us, what chance has an ordinary couple in a council estate got? or a single mother in Brixton got?” If Meadow’s Law is fatally flawed then there has not been one miscarriage of justice but a great number, ruining the lives of dozens of people who have been in prison or had their babies taken from them for nothing more than having the wrong genes. Perhaps Home Secretary David Blunkett might consider this: That the law should approach grieving mothers with a new, crude aphorism: that, in the absence of compelling evidence of murder, one cot death is a tragedy, and two is a tragedy, and three is a tragedy.
John Sweeney.
Sally Clark and Angela Cannings
I received this message in my comments section today, but I feel it should be a top-post because it is a direct consequence of the malignant opinions of 'Professor' Roy Meadow.
Angela Cannings has announced recently that she is to separate from her husband and daughter in order to make a fresh start in life
THIS IS JUST A SAMPLE OF TODAYS PRESS CUTTINGS
I hope that Prof Meadow realises what a devastating effect his 'expertise' has had on innocent people's lives.
Professor Meadow has a lot to answer for.
Nothing can compensate the Cannings family for what they have been forced to endure. Angela and her husband have been to hell and back and are still paying the price. The toll on their relationship is too huge for any of us to imagine.
I wonder how professor Meadow sleeps at night after all the human misery he has caused.
Amazing how many lives can be destroyed by one man's stupidity and incompetence. We can only pray that the Clark and Canning families can move on from these fresh troubles.
Publish this comment.
Reject this comment.
Moderate comments for this blog.
MY OWN MESSAGE FOR ANGELA CANNINGS IS THIS:
Angela Cannings has announced recently that she is to separate from her husband and daughter in order to make a fresh start in life
THIS IS JUST A SAMPLE OF TODAYS PRESS CUTTINGS
I hope that Prof Meadow realises what a devastating effect his 'expertise' has had on innocent people's lives.
Professor Meadow has a lot to answer for.
Nothing can compensate the Cannings family for what they have been forced to endure. Angela and her husband have been to hell and back and are still paying the price. The toll on their relationship is too huge for any of us to imagine.
I wonder how professor Meadow sleeps at night after all the human misery he has caused.
Amazing how many lives can be destroyed by one man's stupidity and incompetence. We can only pray that the Clark and Canning families can move on from these fresh troubles.
Publish this comment.
Reject this comment.
Moderate comments for this blog.
MY OWN MESSAGE FOR ANGELA CANNINGS IS THIS:
"God will not let you be tested beyond your strength but with your testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it" (1 Corinthians 10:13).
You are a tough cookie and you are a survivor. Be guided by your own instincts and you will be fine.http://tinyurl.com/3926z4
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Generating Hype Waves and Computer Statistics
We are drowning in information
but starved of knowledge – J. Naisbitt
Information Fusion is about fusing information from different sources in order to facilitate our understanding of a complex system, thereby providing insights that could not be gained from any of the individual data sources in isolation.
It would appear that the baying crowd needs a showdown between two major players and the players respond provocatively with ever increasing fervour, which is matched by an increasing traffic spike, but only whilst the players are feeding the frenzied onlookers. Observers click in regularly to check on progress, thereby adding to the overall numbers. If one player looks to be the overall winner and the other backs off, the traffic statistics reflect this development and drop back to their original low levels.
The resultant stats do not represent a logical section of society. They do not fire up neurons and make mental connections like the human brain does, because a crowd is a random section of the population that is made up of different people with different expectations, values and upbringing. The statistics mirroring the crowd cannot react logically. The stats cannot make choices between good and evil, worthy or unworthy. All stats are equal in contributing noise to the general hubbub. They act as on/off switches and leave their mark without giving any indication as to the part they are likely to play in the showdown.
Graph 1 (The winning team)
Graph 2 (The losing team)
but starved of knowledge – J. Naisbitt
Information Fusion is about fusing information from different sources in order to facilitate our understanding of a complex system, thereby providing insights that could not be gained from any of the individual data sources in isolation.
It would appear that the baying crowd needs a showdown between two major players and the players respond provocatively with ever increasing fervour, which is matched by an increasing traffic spike, but only whilst the players are feeding the frenzied onlookers. Observers click in regularly to check on progress, thereby adding to the overall numbers. If one player looks to be the overall winner and the other backs off, the traffic statistics reflect this development and drop back to their original low levels.
The resultant stats do not represent a logical section of society. They do not fire up neurons and make mental connections like the human brain does, because a crowd is a random section of the population that is made up of different people with different expectations, values and upbringing. The statistics mirroring the crowd cannot react logically. The stats cannot make choices between good and evil, worthy or unworthy. All stats are equal in contributing noise to the general hubbub. They act as on/off switches and leave their mark without giving any indication as to the part they are likely to play in the showdown.
Graph 1 (The winning team)
Graph 2 (The losing team)
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Rebecca Riley, 4, Casualty of Psychiatric “Treatment”
ahrp.blogspotrebecca-riley
Boston_News
The Boston Globe reports on the drug-induced death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley who had been “diagnosed” as suffering from both ADHD and Bipolar Disorder at the tender age of 28 months. She was prescribed three powerful psychotropic drugs whose toxic effects have never been shown to be safe or appropriate. Her two older siblings were likewise “diagnosed” and prescribed the same drug regimen by a licensed child psychiatrist at Tufts New England Medical Center.
In the final months of Rebecca Riley's life, a school nurse said the little girl was so weak she was like a "floppy doll."The pre-school principal had to help Rebecca off the bus because she was shaking so badly.
Should children so young be prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs meant for adults?
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
SALLY CLARK DIED of Natural Causes
This is a duplicate post outlining the claims made by the blogger Professor Hamblin that Sally Clark was guilty of killing her children so she committed suicide. The blogger purporting to be Professor Terry Hamblin has been spamming my blog. The imposter is an Internet Marketer.
http://jkn.com/View?j=784939.998232583196
Sally Clark, the mother who was imprisoned for 3 years for killing her two infant sons, but later released following a campaign to discredit the medical witness against her, has died under suspicious circumstances. News outlets are hinting at suicide and that she was known to have had an alcohol problem and to have been a depressive. So far response in the correspondence columns of the major newspapers has been that the ordeal of unjust imprisonment had driven her to it.I wonder. Perhaps she was possessed by guilt that she really had killed her kids and remorse that she had brought down two eminent professors of paediatrics in getting the decision reversed.I have not followed the case closely, but it seems to me that anyone who attacks motherhood is on a hiding to nothing, even if the mother is a lawyer. There has been a prolonged and vituperative attack on the concept of Munchausen-by-proxy, and the doctor who videoed a mother harming her child in hospital was attacked for an intrusion into privacy.It may be that Sally Clark was entirely innocent. I suspect we will never know the truth. However, being declared innocent by a court doesn't make you innocent any more than being declared guilty by a court makes you guilty. I rather suspect that more people are falsely declared innocent than are falsely declared guilty.
posted by Terry Hamblin at 7:33AM
______________________________________________________
The identity of the blogger Terry Hamblin does not match up with the identity of Professor Terry Hamblin of Southampton University. Furthermore, Professor Hamblin’s name has been used to support an unscientific, creationist document called “Truth in Science” which has been condemned by the UK Education Department. TiS has circulated thousands of DVDs and resource packs to every high school in the UK without consulting the UK Government Department. The Discovery Institute in the USA produced the creationist materials and Professor Terry Hamblin's name (amongst other retired UK scientists) has been used as a prop to raise substantial funds, purportedly for CLL, but these funds have been deployed specifically for the forwarding of creationist materials.
http://jkn.com/View?j=784939.998232583196
Sally Clark, the mother who was imprisoned for 3 years for killing her two infant sons, but later released following a campaign to discredit the medical witness against her, has died under suspicious circumstances. News outlets are hinting at suicide and that she was known to have had an alcohol problem and to have been a depressive. So far response in the correspondence columns of the major newspapers has been that the ordeal of unjust imprisonment had driven her to it.I wonder. Perhaps she was possessed by guilt that she really had killed her kids and remorse that she had brought down two eminent professors of paediatrics in getting the decision reversed.I have not followed the case closely, but it seems to me that anyone who attacks motherhood is on a hiding to nothing, even if the mother is a lawyer. There has been a prolonged and vituperative attack on the concept of Munchausen-by-proxy, and the doctor who videoed a mother harming her child in hospital was attacked for an intrusion into privacy.It may be that Sally Clark was entirely innocent. I suspect we will never know the truth. However, being declared innocent by a court doesn't make you innocent any more than being declared guilty by a court makes you guilty. I rather suspect that more people are falsely declared innocent than are falsely declared guilty.
posted by Terry Hamblin at 7:33AM
______________________________________________________
The identity of the blogger Terry Hamblin does not match up with the identity of Professor Terry Hamblin of Southampton University. Furthermore, Professor Hamblin’s name has been used to support an unscientific, creationist document called “Truth in Science” which has been condemned by the UK Education Department. TiS has circulated thousands of DVDs and resource packs to every high school in the UK without consulting the UK Government Department. The Discovery Institute in the USA produced the creationist materials and Professor Terry Hamblin's name (amongst other retired UK scientists) has been used as a prop to raise substantial funds, purportedly for CLL, but these funds have been deployed specifically for the forwarding of creationist materials.
BMJ - FALSELY CONVICTED Sally Clark dies suddenly
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1832002
THERE IS NO HIGHER AUTHORITY TO CONFIRM THAT A PERSON WAS WRONGLY CONVICTED.
Professor Southall, consultant paediatrician at the North Staffordshire hospital in Stoke-on-Trent telephoned the police, having watched Mr. Clark give an interview on TV, to state that Mr. Clark, rather than Mrs Clark had deliberately suffocated his children. He later reinforced his claims, stating it was "beyond reasonable doubt" that Mr. Clark was a double murderer. Prof Southall recommended that the couple's surviving child, who was at the time being looked after by Mr Clark, be removed from his care. Due to his eminence and experience the local authority seriously considered this.
Publications_Parliament_UK
Dr.Southall's involvement in Hospital Smothering Experiments
House of Commons Hansard and Press Cuttings
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=31383&SESSION=875
EDM 2767
WORK OF PROFESSOR DAVID SOUTHALL
17.10.2006
Hemming, John
That this House notes that according to the report written by Professor David Hull for North Staffordshire Trust about the work of Professor David Southall in the report written for the University Hospital of North Staffordshire by Professor McLeish and Dr Durbin, Professor McLeish said that Professor Southall `pursued multiple clinical research studies that were poorly designed and therefore were unlikely to produce new knowledge of worth. More worryingly he appears to have had insufficient regard for the ethical standards that should surround all clinical studies in babies'; believes that such comments are important comments that require proper consideration; is surprised that the University Hospital of North Staffordshire is unable to find a copy of this report; calls for the hospital to find a copy of this report and publish its contents; and further calls for an independent judicial or Parliamentary inquiry into the research and clinical activities of Professor David Southall, the failure of the regulatory system to prevent unethical experiments on babies managed by Professor Southall and the misuse of child protection and judicial procedures both to prevent parents from raising complaints about his research and procure children for his research.
Extract of Hansard - 19th December 2006
Dr. Southall has done much research on sudden infant death—an important area of research, given the numbers of children who have died without a clear diagnosis. Perhaps the biggest project was known as protocol 85.02. Dr. Southall looked at the response of babies to asphyxiation, shortage of oxygen and the presence of carbon dioxide. The experiments were known as sleep studies, and started with about 7,000 babies born in the mid ’80s at Doncaster and Rotherham hospitals.
Phases 1 and 2 of the experiments were quite reasonable. Phase 3, however, involved choking babies for 10 sessions of 10 seconds, depriving them of oxygen by giving them only 15 per cent. oxygen rather than the normal 21 per cent., and then giving them too much carbon dioxide. Parents were not asked for their consent to the experiments; they were merely told, in writing, that they would happen, without any details.
A large number of brain-damaged babies were born in Doncaster in the 1980s. However, the records showing which babies were in the experiments were not in the medical files, because Dr. Southall kept secret files, known as special case files. Although compensation was paid, the causation was not entirely clear. The process expanded with the Office for National Statistics providing details of all deaths from sudden infant death syndrome—about 12,000 cases—so that Dr. Southall could continue his research with the siblings....
...Protocol 85.02 was not the only research project operated by Dr. Southall. He also gave carbon monoxide to babies with breathing problems, caused so much damage to babies in his experiments that they needed resuscitation, and did considerable damage through his experimental continuous negative extrathoracic pressure tanks, which he told others was tried and tested when in fact it was research...
..In essence, what we have is evidence of a doctor managing research likely to lead to brain damage and/or death in infants. There is evidence of a substantial number of babies being brain-damaged at the same hospital. There are also records of babies dying from symptoms that could have been caused by that type of research. However, there is no detailed explanation.
The allegations are very serious, but the system of regulation wants to ignore them. After many years of struggle, the General Medical Council started to hear evidence in November relating indirectly to research. It has, however, now decided to adjourn the hearing for 11 months. What is particularly interesting is the history of the special case files. Those have been stored in all sorts of locations, and they have been involved in criminal prosecutions and in family court actions. At one stage, a parent infiltrated the charity run by Dr. Southall to get access to the files. Court action resulted in their repossession.
In December 2005, it was agreed between the GMC and Dr. Southall that the files should be part of the medical records. However, he has now been allowed 11 months to sanitise them. It is important to remember that there is evidence that the files have already been partially sanitised. Many of the patients are completely unaware that the files exist. I have made numerous requests of the NHS to control the files and legal proceedings are continuing in an attempt to keep them intact. However, the authorities continue to resist this, and to tolerate a major cover-up.
_____________________________________________________________
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/316/7135/887
Papers
Effect of exposure to 15% oxygen on breathing patterns and oxygen saturation in infants: interventional study
Commentary: Safety of participants in non-therapeutic research must be ensured
Commentary: Ethical approval of study was warranted
Authors' reply
Effect of exposure to 15% oxygen on breathing patterns and oxygen saturation in infants: interventional study
Editorial by Milner
K J Parkins, research fellow, a C F Poets, lecturer in paediatrics, b L M O'Brien, research assistant, a V A Stebbens, research assistant, a D P Southall, professor of paediatrics. a
a Academic Department of Paediatrics, North Staffordshire Hospital Centre, Stoke on Trent ST4 6QG, b Department of Paediatrics, Medical School, 30623 Hanover, Germany
Correspondence to: Professor Southall cai.uk@compuserve.com
Abstract
Objective: To assess the response of healthy infants to airway hypoxia (15% oxygen in nitrogen).
Design: Interventional study.
Settings: Infants' homes and paediatric ward.
Subjects: 34 healthy infants (20 boys) born at term; mean age at study 3.1 months. 13 of the infants had siblings whose deaths had been ascribed to the sudden infant death syndrome.
Intervention: Respiratory variables were measured in room air (pre-challenge), while infants were exposed to 15% oxygen (challenge), and after infants were returned to room air (post-challenge).
Main outcome measures: Baseline oxygen saturation as measured by pulse oximetry, frequency of isolated and periodic apnoea, and frequency of desaturation (oxygen saturation 80% for 4 s). Exposure to 15% oxygen was terminated if oxygen saturation fell to 80% for 1 min.
Results: Mean duration of exposure to 15% oxygen was 6.3 (SD 2.9) hours. Baseline oxygen saturation fell from a median of 97.6% (range 94.0% to 100%) in room air to 92.8% (84.7% to 100%) in 15% oxygen. There was no correlation between baseline oxygen saturation in room air and the extent of the fall in baseline oxygen saturation on exposure to 15% oxygen. During exposure to 15% oxygen there was a reduction in the proportion of time spent in regular breathing pattern and a 3.5-fold increase in the proportion of time spent in periodic apnoea (P<0.001). rs="0.44,">
THERE IS NO HIGHER AUTHORITY TO CONFIRM THAT A PERSON WAS WRONGLY CONVICTED.
Professor Southall, consultant paediatrician at the North Staffordshire hospital in Stoke-on-Trent telephoned the police, having watched Mr. Clark give an interview on TV, to state that Mr. Clark, rather than Mrs Clark had deliberately suffocated his children. He later reinforced his claims, stating it was "beyond reasonable doubt" that Mr. Clark was a double murderer. Prof Southall recommended that the couple's surviving child, who was at the time being looked after by Mr Clark, be removed from his care. Due to his eminence and experience the local authority seriously considered this.
Publications_Parliament_UK
Dr.Southall's involvement in Hospital Smothering Experiments
House of Commons Hansard and Press Cuttings
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=31383&SESSION=875
EDM 2767
WORK OF PROFESSOR DAVID SOUTHALL
17.10.2006
Hemming, John
That this House notes that according to the report written by Professor David Hull for North Staffordshire Trust about the work of Professor David Southall in the report written for the University Hospital of North Staffordshire by Professor McLeish and Dr Durbin, Professor McLeish said that Professor Southall `pursued multiple clinical research studies that were poorly designed and therefore were unlikely to produce new knowledge of worth. More worryingly he appears to have had insufficient regard for the ethical standards that should surround all clinical studies in babies'; believes that such comments are important comments that require proper consideration; is surprised that the University Hospital of North Staffordshire is unable to find a copy of this report; calls for the hospital to find a copy of this report and publish its contents; and further calls for an independent judicial or Parliamentary inquiry into the research and clinical activities of Professor David Southall, the failure of the regulatory system to prevent unethical experiments on babies managed by Professor Southall and the misuse of child protection and judicial procedures both to prevent parents from raising complaints about his research and procure children for his research.
Extract of Hansard - 19th December 2006
Dr. Southall has done much research on sudden infant death—an important area of research, given the numbers of children who have died without a clear diagnosis. Perhaps the biggest project was known as protocol 85.02. Dr. Southall looked at the response of babies to asphyxiation, shortage of oxygen and the presence of carbon dioxide. The experiments were known as sleep studies, and started with about 7,000 babies born in the mid ’80s at Doncaster and Rotherham hospitals.
Phases 1 and 2 of the experiments were quite reasonable. Phase 3, however, involved choking babies for 10 sessions of 10 seconds, depriving them of oxygen by giving them only 15 per cent. oxygen rather than the normal 21 per cent., and then giving them too much carbon dioxide. Parents were not asked for their consent to the experiments; they were merely told, in writing, that they would happen, without any details.
A large number of brain-damaged babies were born in Doncaster in the 1980s. However, the records showing which babies were in the experiments were not in the medical files, because Dr. Southall kept secret files, known as special case files. Although compensation was paid, the causation was not entirely clear. The process expanded with the Office for National Statistics providing details of all deaths from sudden infant death syndrome—about 12,000 cases—so that Dr. Southall could continue his research with the siblings....
...Protocol 85.02 was not the only research project operated by Dr. Southall. He also gave carbon monoxide to babies with breathing problems, caused so much damage to babies in his experiments that they needed resuscitation, and did considerable damage through his experimental continuous negative extrathoracic pressure tanks, which he told others was tried and tested when in fact it was research...
..In essence, what we have is evidence of a doctor managing research likely to lead to brain damage and/or death in infants. There is evidence of a substantial number of babies being brain-damaged at the same hospital. There are also records of babies dying from symptoms that could have been caused by that type of research. However, there is no detailed explanation.
The allegations are very serious, but the system of regulation wants to ignore them. After many years of struggle, the General Medical Council started to hear evidence in November relating indirectly to research. It has, however, now decided to adjourn the hearing for 11 months. What is particularly interesting is the history of the special case files. Those have been stored in all sorts of locations, and they have been involved in criminal prosecutions and in family court actions. At one stage, a parent infiltrated the charity run by Dr. Southall to get access to the files. Court action resulted in their repossession.
In December 2005, it was agreed between the GMC and Dr. Southall that the files should be part of the medical records. However, he has now been allowed 11 months to sanitise them. It is important to remember that there is evidence that the files have already been partially sanitised. Many of the patients are completely unaware that the files exist. I have made numerous requests of the NHS to control the files and legal proceedings are continuing in an attempt to keep them intact. However, the authorities continue to resist this, and to tolerate a major cover-up.
_____________________________________________________________
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/316/7135/887
Papers
Effect of exposure to 15% oxygen on breathing patterns and oxygen saturation in infants: interventional study
Commentary: Safety of participants in non-therapeutic research must be ensured
Commentary: Ethical approval of study was warranted
Authors' reply
Effect of exposure to 15% oxygen on breathing patterns and oxygen saturation in infants: interventional study
Editorial by Milner
K J Parkins, research fellow, a C F Poets, lecturer in paediatrics, b L M O'Brien, research assistant, a V A Stebbens, research assistant, a D P Southall, professor of paediatrics. a
a Academic Department of Paediatrics, North Staffordshire Hospital Centre, Stoke on Trent ST4 6QG, b Department of Paediatrics, Medical School, 30623 Hanover, Germany
Correspondence to: Professor Southall cai.uk@compuserve.com
Abstract
Objective: To assess the response of healthy infants to airway hypoxia (15% oxygen in nitrogen).
Design: Interventional study.
Settings: Infants' homes and paediatric ward.
Subjects: 34 healthy infants (20 boys) born at term; mean age at study 3.1 months. 13 of the infants had siblings whose deaths had been ascribed to the sudden infant death syndrome.
Intervention: Respiratory variables were measured in room air (pre-challenge), while infants were exposed to 15% oxygen (challenge), and after infants were returned to room air (post-challenge).
Main outcome measures: Baseline oxygen saturation as measured by pulse oximetry, frequency of isolated and periodic apnoea, and frequency of desaturation (oxygen saturation 80% for 4 s). Exposure to 15% oxygen was terminated if oxygen saturation fell to 80% for 1 min.
Results: Mean duration of exposure to 15% oxygen was 6.3 (SD 2.9) hours. Baseline oxygen saturation fell from a median of 97.6% (range 94.0% to 100%) in room air to 92.8% (84.7% to 100%) in 15% oxygen. There was no correlation between baseline oxygen saturation in room air and the extent of the fall in baseline oxygen saturation on exposure to 15% oxygen. During exposure to 15% oxygen there was a reduction in the proportion of time spent in regular breathing pattern and a 3.5-fold increase in the proportion of time spent in periodic apnoea (P<0.001). rs="0.44,">
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Orang-utan Survival
Former airhostess Lone Droscher-Nielsen has dedicated her life to saving orang-utans whose habitat is being razed by bulldozers. Without her Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation, it is unlikely that any of these babies would be alive today. Now they attend ‘jungle school’ so they can be returned to safe forests.Monday, May 14, 2007
Pope Benedict supports Evolution
"Pope Benedict's remarks were published this week in Germany in the book Schoepfung und Evolution (Creation and Evolution). He praised scientific progress and did not endorse creationist or "intelligent design" views about life's origins."
“Dozens of schools are using creationist teaching materials (circulated by the Discovery Institute, Seattle, Washington, USA)which have been condemned by the government as "not appropriate to support the science curriculum".
Guardian-Who are Truth In Science?
Truth in Science is lying on its web site. It is trying to convince the public and educators that the issue it wants taught in schools is “Intelligent Design”. This is a scam to cover its real intentions which are the same as the Discovery Institute in the USA – to get its fundamentalist religion into science classrooms.
The group has four board members including a scientist, a businessman, a teacher and a minister in the Free Church of Scotland. They also have a three-member scientific panel and a seven-member council of reference.
LEADING CREATIONIST ACTIVISTS IN THE U.K.
This list includes Professor TERRY HAMBLIN from Southampton University, who is featured in my "Sally Clark" post below (not surprising at all, considering the blogger Professor Terry Hamblin is NOT the genuine Professor Terry Hamblin. Apparently, there's no law against identity theft as long as the imposter does not gain any financial reward, but merely tarnishes the reputation of the person whose name has been acquired/stolen/used for an ulterior motive.)
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Good Luck Tony Blair
I haven't voted but, when I do, I shall vote for Gordon Ramsay
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Jason - Entrepreneur in Action
http://4e1www.calacanis.com/2007/04/27/new-calacanis-link-baiting-rules/
http://www.calacanis.com/2007/04/27/new-calacanis-link-baiting-rules/
OK – I just read the above post and listened to a podcast. It's a bit early to form an opinion, but I liked what I read and heard. Well, what the heck do I know anyway, but I think Jason might be right on most points. My only gripe is that he uses the word “entrepreneur” to describe his job.
OK – Here’s where he and I clash. Jason says:
"Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry: inappropriate or purely promotional comments may be removed."
When/if you have the time to reply to my blog, you will notice that I don’t have any rules, as evidenced by the void in my sidebar – apart from Robina Hood, who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, but that isn’t a rule as such - just an impulse thing.
Loved the interview/podcast with Fred Vogelstein of Wired Magazine, which he described as fallow or shallow. It’s hard to tell with these podcasts.
Jason has half a flame. He is annoyed that Fred refuses to do email interviews. Jason should be glad of a live interview. Some of the email interviews aren’t real, you know. Some people have minions typing out these pre-recorded email interviews. Heck, I’ve even witnessed a professional thingy interviewing himself on a number of occasions. Who said that? You did. I did? No, I did. “Jason doesn’t need an intermediary” now that he has a blog and he wears long pants.
Fred of Wired says the world is siloed and he hovers above those silos and picks out the best bargains, the mall for the price of a dice, and the free plastic spidermen offered with the maize and hay.
OH. my. GOD !!! Jason "gets 50 interview requests a month”. Is he the President in disguise?
Reminder to self: Must work on my PR/Networking skills soon -- and don't expect me to post this into the comments section of the relevant blog 'cause it isn't my best review of all time.
Addendum:
Something went amiss when I copied and pasted the html link to Jason's linkbaiting appeal. So, in the unlikely event that somebody or a nobody should be Googling himself and he discovers that he has an unsolicited review of his labours, the monies should be directed to this website, whereupon it will be re-directed to the attention-grabbers and the desperately needy.
Thank you for your attention.
http://www.calacanis.com/2007/04/27/new-calacanis-link-baiting-rules/
OK – I just read the above post and listened to a podcast. It's a bit early to form an opinion, but I liked what I read and heard. Well, what the heck do I know anyway, but I think Jason might be right on most points. My only gripe is that he uses the word “entrepreneur” to describe his job.
OK – Here’s where he and I clash. Jason says:
"Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry: inappropriate or purely promotional comments may be removed."
When/if you have the time to reply to my blog, you will notice that I don’t have any rules, as evidenced by the void in my sidebar – apart from Robina Hood, who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, but that isn’t a rule as such - just an impulse thing.
Loved the interview/podcast with Fred Vogelstein of Wired Magazine, which he described as fallow or shallow. It’s hard to tell with these podcasts.
Jason has half a flame. He is annoyed that Fred refuses to do email interviews. Jason should be glad of a live interview. Some of the email interviews aren’t real, you know. Some people have minions typing out these pre-recorded email interviews. Heck, I’ve even witnessed a professional thingy interviewing himself on a number of occasions. Who said that? You did. I did? No, I did. “Jason doesn’t need an intermediary” now that he has a blog and he wears long pants.
Fred of Wired says the world is siloed and he hovers above those silos and picks out the best bargains, the mall for the price of a dice, and the free plastic spidermen offered with the maize and hay.
OH. my. GOD !!! Jason "gets 50 interview requests a month”. Is he the President in disguise?
Reminder to self: Must work on my PR/Networking skills soon -- and don't expect me to post this into the comments section of the relevant blog 'cause it isn't my best review of all time.
Addendum:
Something went amiss when I copied and pasted the html link to Jason's linkbaiting appeal. So, in the unlikely event that somebody or a nobody should be Googling himself and he discovers that he has an unsolicited review of his labours, the monies should be directed to this website, whereupon it will be re-directed to the attention-grabbers and the desperately needy.
Thank you for your attention.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
WCW Poem Generator
WilliamCarlosWilliams
This is just to say
I stamped upon the mussels
that were in the paddle pool
which you were probably
saving for breakfast.
Forgive me,
they were propagating
so I filmed them
and they probably died happy.
This is just to say
I stamped upon the mussels
that were in the paddle pool
which you were probably
saving for breakfast.
Forgive me,
they were propagating
so I filmed them
and they probably died happy.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Monday, April 09, 2007
Otters holding Hands
Sea otters sleep at sea, floating around, holding hands as a means of keeping the group together on the ocean surface while floating above the kelp beds that otters feed in. They wrap themselves in the kelp plants to keep themselves stationary and the hand holding keeps bonded mates or family members together while drifting in the ocean swells and currents. It is an acquired behaviour stemming from the otters’ lifestyle at sea. It is also an affectionate stance in nature as it is a means of keeping close to those individuals that are most important to each otter. Otters feel more comfortable holding hands while asleep than drifting alone, so it serves both social and practical purposes.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Sally Clark's Death caused by Wrongful Incarceration
StockportExpress.co.uk
Excerpt:
"
Doctor Steven Watkins stated in the British Medical
Journal in 2003 that Sally Clark had been convicted
by a mathematical error.
During her hearing, judges were told that vital medical evidence, which could have cleared her,
was kept secret in her original trial and that tests
on her son Harry showed it was likely he actually
died from a bacterial infection.
"
It is now on record that the deliberately erroneous, arrogant opinions of Professor Terry Hamblin may have marred potential referrals to him, which could be considered to be unsafe and not in the public interest in the event of his being called upon as an expert in his field.
The original Google captured page has been deleted, but the captured permanent copy can be found at this website.
Excerpt:
"
Doctor Steven Watkins stated in the British Medical
Journal in 2003 that Sally Clark had been convicted
by a mathematical error.
During her hearing, judges were told that vital medical evidence, which could have cleared her,
was kept secret in her original trial and that tests
on her son Harry showed it was likely he actually
died from a bacterial infection.
"
It is now on record that the deliberately erroneous, arrogant opinions of Professor Terry Hamblin may have marred potential referrals to him, which could be considered to be unsafe and not in the public interest in the event of his being called upon as an expert in his field.
The original Google captured page has been deleted, but the captured permanent copy can be found at this website.
.
http://jkn.com/View?j=784939.998232583196
.
BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT
http://plus.maths.org/issue21/features/clark/index.html
.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Silver Moon
Silver Moon
The moon’s first kiss
was a tentative nudge
as she circled the earth.
Curious moon, she wept.
A sonorous serenade
from ripening midnight skies
swamps the latent earth.
Sleepy moon, she sighs.
Moon quivers, inhales the void
in a breath of wonderment
as vibrant new life emerges.
Harvest moon, she reaps.
Eons pass through many
trials and tribulations
the reeling rocks have wrought.
Wise moon, she weeps.
Tears enshroud the moon,
helpless onlooker in the face
of drought and devastation.
Spartan moon, she shivers.
The moon inhales a cocktail
of noxious clouds of progress
from test tubes and engines of man.
Hapless moon, she sobs.
Outraged moon looks on
as man wages war, killing
life in the ocean and forest.
Anxious moon, she weeps.
Inadequate moon, pondering
what outcome awaits the earth.
She can hardly bear to look.
Cheerless moon, she weeps.
~Coral~
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