"Child Abuse Pediatricians" A Disturbing New Specialty

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I started to put together a post about the Daugherty family of California whose children were medically kidnapped while vacationing in Washington state as well as a reexamination of the Pelletier case in Mass because the doctors- the same activist quacks were involved in both cases. Before going into the specifics of the cases, something else came to light- there's a new medical discipline- "Child Abuse Pediatricians," doctors who specifically treat cases of child abuse. As is the case with other pseudo disciplines such as psychology and psychiatry, if there's no abuse (or mental illness) it's necessary to create it to validate the discipline. After all, if a child has a broken leg it doesn't matter if it was broken by child abuse or a bicycling accident- the treatment is the same and doesn't require a specialist.

So, before we look into the Daugherty and Pelletier cases, let's look at what a child abuse doctor is.

What Kind of Training Do Child Abuse Pediatricians Have?

~Graduation from college and medical school 

~Three or four years of residency training in the medical care of children

~Additional training and experience in child abuse pediatrics

~Certification by the American Board of Pediatrics and may have additional certification in the subspecialty of child abuse pediatrics

Other than typical pediatric training the only difference is the "additional training" of which I could find nothing... except that they liaise with CPS and law enforcement. The article goes on to say: " Because of their special training and skills, child abuse pediatricians are the doctors most able to help determine if and how a child was injured. When appropriate, child abuse pediatricians actively search for medical problems or other explanations for a child’s symptoms. " But once again, there's never any mention of what these special training and skills are. The real problem arises with this... "child abuse pediatricians actively search for medical problems or other explanations for a child’s symptoms." As we shall see with the Daugherty and Pelletier cases, this almost invariably blames the parents.

 When the Daugherty family decided to visit Seattle, Washington, for a 4 day whale watching trip to celebrate their son’s 10th birthday, they had no idea that a trip to the emergency room would turn into a nightmare that would rip their family apart. 

 They were more than a thousand miles from home and from their own doctors, when chronically ill Zachary began running a fever and showing signs of an infection.When his parents took him to the emergency room at Seattle Children’s Hospital, they blindly walked into a web of controversy involving some of the most notorious Child Abuse Specialist doctors in the country, with connections to Medical Kidnap stories we have published spanning from Boston to Arizona, California, and Washington. 

 California parents Kevin and Erin Daugherty learned that the conflict between Boston area doctors involved with the notorious Justina Pelletier case didn’t stay in Boston. It has spread all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast of America. Their son Zachary has been caught in the crossfire of differing philosophies of different doctors. 

As is inevitably the case, when activism becomes involved with medicine, no good can come out of it. Zachary suffers from  Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), as well as other medical conditions. But to the activist doctors involved in the case in Washington it was clearly  “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy” or  “Factious Disorder,” or in the parlance of the social workers at CPS "Medical Child Abuse."

This is one of the most over-diagnosed syndromes in pediatrics. Activist doctors along with the medically incompetent seldom look past the symptoms at the underlying diseases and blame the parents... having washed their hands of any responsibility, they go on about their business while the patient suffers from the untreated illness and his/her parents suffer the loss of a child- all because of activism and incompetence. "Child Abuse Specialists" you see only specialize in abuse, not medicine. Zachary had specialists home in California, but was seized by CPS in Washington.

 They were an active part of the Ehlers-Danlos community. Zachary, his older sister Zoe, and their mother Erin all have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, an inherited connective tissue disorder. Despite medical challenges, they loved to travel, explore, and learn. Parents Erin and Kevin took their family to the Seattle area in March 2017 to celebrate Zachary’s 10th birthday with a surprise whale-watching trip.After a full day of playing on Whidbey Island, Zachary began running a fever and acted tired. When they got back to the mainland, his parents gave him Tylenol as well as his normal dose of Enalapril, an ACE inhibitor used for high blood pressure. 

These conditions had already been diagnosed and a check with doctors back home in California would have disclosed that... but the activists in Washington had something to prove. Here's what happened next...

 

The emergency room doctors consulted with Zachary’s doctors from Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, who explained that he was having an anaphylactoid reaction. They confirmed that Zachary has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS). One of the symptoms of MCAS is anaphylaxis.

They later realized that he had developed an allergic reaction to the Enalapril. He was also evaluated for a possible infection to his central IV line.

Zachary was admitted to the hospital on March 5.

His temperature was under control until sometime during the next day. The Daughertys asked for him to be given Tylenol when they saw his temperature rising and his hands flushing.

They could see that he was heading for a mast cell crisis if they did not get the fever under control. His condition deteriorated and finally Erin insisted that they treat her son’s fever before his condition got worse. She was finally given permission to give him a dose of Tylenol.

At another point, Zachary was very “itchy,” which was, again, a manifestation of the MCAS. Doctors reportedly ignored his discomfort for much of the day while his mother begged for them to give him some Benadryl.

Medical reports show that Erin was simply following medical protocols that she had been given by Zachary’s care team back home for the conditions with which he had been diagnosed. 

Then things went from bad to worse... politics entered the fray. Erin, Zachary's mom, mentioned that she had been referred to Dr. Richard Boles a specialist in Mitochondrial Diseases. Later, after it was too late she learned that Dr. Boles had an unpleasant history with the doctors at Seattle Children's Hosp. He had testified in dozens of cases against the hospital. She said that as soon as Dr. Boles name was mentioned things at the hospital changed.

 They were just parents wanting good care for their child. They didn’t realize they had walked into the middle of a hornet’s nest. They had no idea that there was a history of conflict between doctors at Seattle Children’s Hospital, particularly the leader of the Child Abuse team, and Dr. Boles. The Daughertys had never met any of them.

 Maxine Eichner is a law professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has a B.A. (magna cum laude) from Yale University, a J.D. from Yale University, an M.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the Graham Kenan Distinguished Professor of Law, and writes on issues at the intersection of law and political theory, focusing particularly on family relationships and social welfare law and policy.Dr. Eichner wrote about Medical Child Abuse in an article entitled, “The New Child Abuse Panic,” published in the New York Times. Of Dr. Boles, she says:

Dr. Richard G. Boles, a mitochondrial disease specialist who has worked on some 100 cases involving suspected medical child abuse, said that only about five fit the classic Munchausen situation and should be considered abuse.Of the rest, he says, about two-thirds involved a demanding mother who got on a doctor’s nerves; the remainder involved a parent who was too anxious in dealing with doctors who couldn’t give adequate answers.

Yet, the terms “medical child abuse” and “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy” seem to be thrown around quite a bit when a medically complex child is involved (or there is evidence of medical malpractice or evidence of a vaccine injury). In other words “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy” and "medical child abuse" are more often cover your ass terms than medical diagnoses. But that didn't help the Daughertys.

 Against the backdrop of all of this, the Daughertys found themselves in a hospital room at Seattle Children’s Hospital, fighting enormous forces that they could neither see nor fight effectively. They could not have known what they were up against.A resident doctor wrote orders that said that Erin was no longer allowed to participate in any direct care of her own son.The SCAN team, “Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect,” was notified, and it wasn’t long before Erin, a devoted mother of a child with complex medical issues, was accused of medical child abuse and Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. 

Zachary was medically kidnapped and in the end of March was transferred to a children's hospital in Orange County California.

 Child Abuse doctors Dr. Rebecca Wiester and Dr. Ken Feldman from Seattle Children’s Hospital never spoke with any of the family, and they never examined Zachary. Yet they told CPS, law enforcement, and Child Abuse doctors in California that there was no evidence of the diagnoses of Zachary’s medical conditions. 

 The social workers and Child Abuse doctors in California allegedly simply took the word of the Seattle doctors, never actually examining any past medical records or the children. It seems that there is a network of child abuse specialists that watch out for each other the same way that CPS, social workers and law enforcement do.

TOMORROW: The "Network"

https://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/health-management/pediatric-specialists/Pages/What-is-a-Child-Abuse-Pediatrician.aspx

https://medicalkidnap.com/2018/02/16/california-christian-homeschool-family-torn-apart-as-children-are-medically-kidnapped-forced-into-public-school-and-mother-is-forced-out-of-family-home/