In the emotive world of
child abuse, Professor Sir Roy Meadow became a celebrity in the last 25 years. He described
Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy in which parents were said to have confabulated symptoms in their children in order to obtain medical treatment. Among child and health workers, Police and Social Workers, his eponymous law held that multiple childhood deaths in individual families were indicative of abuse and infanticide.
He was of course a popular forensic expert and his testimony resulted in murder convictions and removal of at-risk children from their families. But the Court of Appeal in UK has found that Prof. Meadow's statistical assertions and scientific
reasonings were themselves confabulated and there have been a number of convictions overturned. He is now
fighting for his professional reputation before the General Medical Council in London.
[More Inside]
posted by peacay
on Jun 28, 2005 -
17 comments
The
Kaceesque story of a woman in prison for faking her daughter's leukemia to gain thousands of dollars in donations, now says she concocted the scheme to keep her
husband from leaving. Teresa Milbrandt said she regrets what she did, which included shaving her daughter Hannah's head and giving her sleeping pills to make it look like she was undergoing chemotherapy. The husband went to
Prison As Well.
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is a parenting disorder where parents, usually the mother, fabricate symptoms in their children, thus subjecting the child to unnecessary medical tests and/or surgical procedures, though
It is a highly controversial condition, which
some doubt even exists.
posted by Blake
on Mar 29, 2004 -
4 comments
