Re: Profile of suspected MSBP perpetrators -Reply

["Michael Ryan" <MichaeR2@xxxxxxxxxx>]

As a Paediatrician I would agree that MBPS is a
Paediatric diagnosis and is made when a child
presents with symptoms and signs of illness that do
not add up or when the course of the illness is not
what would be expected. The quiet common
scenario is that the child has an illness which
baffles the most experienced physicians.

I would think that cases where a medical diagnosis
has been missed would be extremely uncommon .

Dr. Vera Schreibner is not a medical doctor. Her
theories on immunisation have been extremely well
analysed by the Australian Skeptics (They have a
web page) and have found to be unscientific and
without validity.


Dr. Michael Ryan

Sydney. Australia..

>>> Brian Morgan <brianmorgan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
27/May/1999 11:24pm >>>
Thank you James.

A very small number of US academics and medico
legal experts share this view -
Dr Eric Mart, a psychologist who testifies has
published a paper criticising
this approach, based on Bayesian theory.
Professors David Allison and Mark
Roberts of Stony Brook have just published a book
- Disordered Mothers or
Disordered Diagnosis, critically examining the
history of MSBP and
incorporating similar ideas to Mart's. One UK
expert has attacked the profile:
Professor Colin Morley now works in Australia and
is effectively out of the
arena. US lawyer Tom Ryan says powerful things
about pseudo or junk science -
emperor's clothes - diagnosis de jour - that sort of
thing.

What you  find difficult believe is I'm afraid to say
true.

There are powerful forces at play with eminent
doctors prepared to use the
profile, without even seeing their patients - Do you
know of Drs Herbert
Schreier and Judith Libow in the US who wrote the
book Hurting for Love - and
in the UK Professor David Southall.

The big problem with the diagnosis is that it is
made by excluding genuine
illness in the child - at some point the clinicians
stop looking for an
illness in the child (that is when they have so far
found nothing to explain
the symptoms being displayed or described) and
start applying the profile to
the parent, usually the mother, as a suspected
fabricator or imposer of a
fictitious illness.

But stopping looking for an illness can mean that a
so far undiagnosed illness
gets overlooked  - in  cases I have studied
conditions such as phenytoin
syndrome remained undiagnosed - in another
polymyositis - hyperallergy in
another - and in a current case it looks rather as
though Turner's syndrome in
the girl and undescended testicles in a 7 year old
boy have been overlooked
through focussing on the mother as a suspeted
MSBP case.

Dr Vera Scheibner in Australia actuall goes further
to suggest that MSBP is
used - misused - to silence parents who have
complained about the failure of
doctors to make a diagnosis - often in cases of
alleged vaccine damage.

I have encountered numerous cases where the
trigger for the allegations of
MSBP is a complaint against a doctor, threat of
legal action etc, and this is
a very effective weapon, since very few cases of
MSBP get thrown out in the
courts.

Any ideas for moving this forward as a programme
of research?


James Hord wrote:

> Brian,
> Just a quick response.....
>
> > A number of child abuse experts use a 'profile'
of around two dozen
> > features said to be associated with
perpetrators of Munchausen Syndrome
> > by Proxy child abuse in order to confirm that a
suspected abuser is
> > another such case.
> Brian,
> No such list of features can "confirm" that a
certain behavioral pattern
> exists.  That is akin to "confirming" that all UK
professionls have
> computers, using the data from this list of mail
participants.
>
> >
> > There are supporters for this method of working
and others who say it is
> > unscientific.
>
> AMEN.
> >
> > Nevertheless, confirmations of an MSBP
diagnosis using this method have
> > been accepted as legitimate in the USA and
the UK.
>
> Very difficult to believe, Brian.....
>
> You cannot generalize from a list, to a specific. 
An individual is a
> specific entity.   While the "hit" rate may beat
chance in a large group of
> similar cases, you cannot point to a singular case
and decide the specific
> feature.  If 60%, 80%, or 98% of all college
students have IQs of 115 or
> better, that does not mean that a particular
student has an IQ of 115 or
> better......  simple logic.
>
> Jim Hord, Ph.D.
> Clinical Psychologist