R: Profile of suspected MSBP perpetrators -Reply

["Oddone Virginio" <oddovir@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Dr. Witherspoon,

		       you wrote: 
> 
> 
> Dear Dr. Ryan,
> 
> No doubt your medical training leaves you qualified
> to Dx medical conditions.  However, MSBP, as traditionally
> conceptualized, is deemed a behavioral consequence of
> unconscious psychological antecedents.  Any induced 
> medical condition is an outcome, as are the sequalae to a
> hammer blow to the head.  Judging a head injury was caused 
> by a hammer blow does not let one conclude that the carpenter 
> did it, for example.


Sorry, but it belongs to medicine to decide ALSO if it was the carpenter or
the man in the grocery nearby. There is even a specialisation (Forensic
Medicine), which - at least here in Europe - is taught in the Medical
Schools, it dates quite back in time (at least the XVI century; modern
forensic medicine is born in the first quarter of the XIX century).
Motives' analysis is the realm of the psychologist; analysis of medical
conditions, of their existence, causation, possible links with other
people's behaviors, belongs to medicine. Applying your reasoning to, for
example, industrial medicine would imply that medicine should not (and
never) discuss about the relationships between, e.g., John Doe's pleural
mesothelioma and his previous working conditions, exposure to asbesto etc..
(By the way, I am a doctor specialised in forensic medicine).

I agree, however, with your invitation to prudence. I'm also appalled at
the idea of doctors blackmailing mothers, by using the threat of MSBP:
beside any other evaluation, it is decidedly against all traditional norms
of the medical profession, everywhere in the world and at any time in
history. One thing that doctors (and every person interested in MSBP) ought
to remember is the fact that there is a large area of "hyperemphasizing"
children's ills by Moms, as a negotiating instrument against hospital and
other medical services' red tape, or toward their own pediatrician,
particularly when thet disagree with the latters diagnosis and decisions
(italian mothers, here in Italy at least, are very good at that; nobody
here would call it MSBP)

Virginio


Virginio Oddone MD
V. Avogadro 6
10121 - Torino (Italy)
e-mail: oddovir@ipsnet.it