Proglodytes learn academia ain't smart and the state ain't beneficient

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

pnwmom (53,501 posts)

We failed her. Big time. Boston Children’s was experimenting on Justina Pelletier,
   
Last edited Wed Jul 2, 2014, 04:16 PM - Edit history (7)

and most progressives got snowed by the Harvard docs. We listened to the Harvard docs and the social workers who thought the parents were "rude" -- for fighting back -- and we failed Justina.

And so did the “liberal media" which for the most part ignored her case. It has come out now that the teenager had pneumonia twice while she was under the “care” of the State of Massachusetts for her “somatic disorder.” I bet you didn’t know that. It wasn’t on MSNBC.

Why did most progressives and the liberal media fail to champion Justina Pelletier?

I think the reason was simple. The first person the family turned to was their parish priest, and from that point they got support from various religious groups, who were connected to right-wing figures – who correctly saw what was going on and worked hard to free her. Since right-wing people can NEVER be right about ANYTHING – and this was HARVARD, after all – many progressives decided that the parents and their right wing associates must be wrong. They decided to trust Boston Children’s and the State of Massachusetts that they were acting in Justina’s best interests. And they were not.

The people from Harvard who convinced Massachusetts to make her a ward of the state had a vested interest in her case: they were conducting research in somatoform disorder, and she appeared to fit the bill. Based on a 25 minute interview and a 12 hour hospital stay, they decided that her devastating symptoms were psychological, rather than caused by a physical disease – and that the parents were guilty of “overmedicalizing” her. (I am not saying that these doctors deliberately, and with malice, decided to use this girl for their purposes. I believe that their personal biases unconsciously influenced their diagnosis and that the Children's hospital and the state failed to protect her.)

In making this diagnosis, the Harvard docs refused to speak to the specialist at Tufts University who had been treating her and her older sister for mitochondrial disease for years. Then they got the state to take custody away from her parents and put her in a locked psychiatric ward for more than a year, where they could control every moment of her day and everything she put in her mouth. They withdrew all the medication prescribed by her doctor at Tufts, a top specialist in mitochondrial disease, put her through "behavioral modification," and studied her while she deteriorated. For more than a year. While she got pneumonia twice.

And they could do all this because Massachusetts had a law and Boston Children’s had a policy that allowed wards of the state to be experimented on, even in research with significant risk that carried no benefit for the child.

Yes, you read that right. Even significant risk with no direct benefit.

After 16 months in State custody, she was finally released back to her parents – free and clear. Her parents’ care of her is not being supervised by either Massachusetts or her home state of Connecticut – because it turns out they had done nothing wrong. Connecticut always refused to get involved and never even opened a file on her because they had no evidence – other than what Massachusetts was claiming to them about “overmedicalizing” – that would support their own investigation.

The judge who had been involved had placed a gag order on everybody involved, but the father finally decided to break it last fall and go public. Unfortunately, other than the Boston Globe, which ran detailed and supportive investigative pieces on her case, and the Hartford Courant, most of the media coverage was dominated by right-wing and religious organizations. And in this case Fox news got it right.

The left-wing got snowed by Harvard , and possibly by the fact that this was a blue state. Too many progressives – who would otherwise care about this sort of thing – decided there must be something wrong with the parents. We just didn’t know the whole story, people said. And the father was so rude to the social workers! We needed to trust the hospital and the social workers that they were doing the right thing.

Well, they weren’t. And that’s why Washington’s Representative Jim McDermott, an M.D. himself, is among a group of four in the house (two Democrats and two Republicans) to introduce a bill that would prevent this from ever happening again. No state will ever be allowed to experiment on its wards in research that involves risk and carries no direct benefit to them. It boggles my mind that this has been legal anywhere but it has. In 2014. In liberal Massachusetts.

Most of the "liberal media" got snowed by the fancy docs at Harvard. The Boston Globe, and the Hartford Courant did not. Fox News didn't either. A hat tip to Fox, for getting it right – for once.

Guardian LV: http://www.donotlink.com/framed?53149

Rep. Jim McDermott highlighted the “strength and bravery” of Justina Pellier and her family, calling it “a guidestar” for the nation. It was their responsibility to make sure children were not the “subject of risky medical experimentation,” he said and for this reason he was working with the other three reps “to pass Justina’s law as quickly as possible.”


Justina speaks out: (This interview is from the Blaze because I can't find an interview with Justina on a more reputable site.)

The Blaze: http://www.donotlink.com/framed?53147

___________

The Boston Globe investigation:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/15/justina/vnwzbbNdiodSD7WDTh6xZI/story.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025183785

This is who the Proglodytes would surrender their lives to.

[BlueStateSaint]

Let 'em, Snugs.

[DefiantSix]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025183785

This is who the Proglodytes would surrender their OUR lives to.

Fixt.

[Dori]

Some aren't buying the story because this was only reported in right wing news and the family had Christian supporters.

[franksolich]

Some aren't buying the story because this was only reported in right wing news and the family had Christian supporters.

Yeah, that's surely half the thread, primitives bitching about the sources.....rather than dealing with whether or not it's all true.

The SidDithers primitive as usual is an idiot about sources.

[JohnnyReb]

Ain't mother government wonderful....so caring....so....so....just wonderful.

[thundley4]

Greta van Sustern has been on this story almost from the beginning. She is not a "right-winger" even though she is on Fox. 

The left never believes the State can be wrong unless it's run by conservatives.

[USA4ME]

Puzzledtraveller

174. Some progressives are just statists

I think you are a true progressive/liberal for posting this.

All of you libs are statists. All of you. Without fail.

Give the pnwmom primitive a few minutes. She'll be extolling the virtues of big brother with the rest of them.

.

[FlaGator]

Those DUers make me sick. The can't put politics aside for a second and recognize the harm done to this little girl and her family. I'm willing to beat that if the State decided to grab up one of their children for little to no reason they'd have a different definition of what a kidnapping is.

[HawkHogan]

Those DUers make me sick. The can't put politics aside for a second and recognize the harm done to this little girl and her family. I'm willing to beat that if the State decided to grab up one of their children for little to no reason they'd have a different definition of what a kidnapping is.

They really are a disgusting bunch, and the Democrats continue to move further and further left.   They want these agencies to have more and more power.  They never imagine that it could be their kids taken away next. 

[Dori]

They never imagine that it could be their kids taken away next.

I don't know which is worse for a kid.  Raised by the state or raised by a DUmmy.

[thundley4]

I don't know which is worse for a kid.  Raised by the state or raised by a DUmmy.

Not much difference there since most government bureaucrats are little better than DUmmies.

[98ZJUSMC]

All of you libs are statists. All of you. Without fail.

Give the pnwmom primitive a few minutes. She'll be extolling the virtues of big brother with the rest of them.

Yeah, this mugging was viewed, not experienced.  Business, as usual in 10...9...

overmedicalizing

Huh?

[HawkHogan]

Not much difference there since most government bureaucrats are little better than DUmmies.

Exactly.  Either way the child is raised on our tax dollars.

[Rebel]

This is how you know what type of subhuman ghouls we're dealing with. The ONLY reason they're not ALL up in arms over this is this:

kcr (6,810 posts)

22. It's always been right wing sources. They've taken up this cause.

I definitely don't see itl ike the OP does.

They would sacrifice a child, if it meant being on the opposite side of conservatives. Party trumps decency.

[Rebel]

Case in point:

alarimer (12,650 posts)

235. It stinks to high heaven that right wing sites are the only place for "news" on this.

Not credible at all. Nor do I trust the parents here.

**** you DUmbasses. 

[Karin]

Oh my God.  After reading the replies to this thread on here, I don't think I can stomach rowing over there.  My hat's off to pnwmom for posting it, and being brutally honest about it.   The entire situation is a surreal nightmare that shouldn't have happened in this country. 

****ing DUmbasses:  She's got Boston Globe and Hartford Courant sources.  What the hell is wrong with those?  Wake the **** up, it could be you or your kid next. 

[wasp69]

****ing DUmbasses:  She's got Boston Globe and Hartford Courant sources.  What the hell is wrong with those?  Wake the **** up, it could be you or your kid next.

They don't care, Karin.  The chains they forge, and the prisons they build, are never for themselves although they eventually find themselves in both.

As it has been with totalitarian "utopias", as it ever will be.

[Carl]

Godwins law be damned...it is clear who it is among us that would have been herding fellow citizens on the trains.

[Karin]

Here is how the thread ended up, as of Sunday.  The bolding is mine. 

Response to friendly_iconoclast (Reply #296)

Sun Jul 6, 2014, 04:11 AM

Star Member pnwmom (53,664 posts)

297. The worst part, to me,

was that someone apparently from the family responded to me, saying that I was wrong -- that they struggled for more than a year to get anyone to help them. So it wasn't just the fact that the Pelletiers had connected with right-wing people that kept progressives from getting involved. This person thought maybe liberals never tried to help because they are more likely to want government to control people's lives. I tried to respond but before I could answer, someone alerted and this person was kicked off after a single post. There was only that one sentence that could be seen as "attacking" progressives -- the opinion that liberals wanted government control -- out of a long, anguished post about how they couldn't get anyone to listen to them.

So we proved our need for control again, by cutting this person off without a discussion. I never got a chance to explain that most liberals do NOT want the government intruding unnecessarily into our lives. That's the meme of the right-wingers that the Pelletier's are surrounded by now -- the only people who have been willing to help them.

Someone else in the thread says s/he knows the family personally and that they're nice, normal people. It's too bad some alerter was so thin-skinned and some jury agreed.

Can you believe that horseshit?    to the ****ing alerter. 

[Wineslob]

They decided to trust Boston Children’s and the State of Massachusetts that they were acting in Justina’s best interests. And they were not.

We needed to trust the hospital and the social workers that they were doing the right thing.

Well, they weren’t.

And yet:

kcr (6,847 posts)
54. She wasn't kidnapped to beging with and I doubt highly that she was tortured or expiremented on

I see it as a case of extreme anti-government whackos taking up a cause and nothing they report should be taken seriously. I have read the Boston Globe and other news sources. It's a local story here.

kcr (6,847 posts)
81. Only if you frame it the way the RW lunatics are. n/t

kcr (6,847 posts)
122. And you know this how? From the parents and their media representation?

We're getting their side of the story. Of course they say there's no evidence. I've read things that make me think the hospital may have been right.

kcr (6,847 posts)
197. I have.

It would be helpful if you pointed out where the evidence is there. Maybe I missed it.

kcr (6,847 posts)
309. That's assuming the claim about it being about a disagreement over a diagnosis is correct.

The fact that a doctor stands by his or her diagnosis doesn't automatically mean those who suspect abuse are wrong. None of those things speak volumes to me because so much of it is based on speculation from facts presented by one side. You are assuming she got worse because of the doctors at Boston and not because she was subjected to unnecessary medical treatments. I'm not. I'm sorry, but a removal of a child from parents is not an outrageous travesty. Not all removals are permanent. Children being returned to their parents doesn't mean the removal wasn't warranted.

Star Member seaglass (5,823 posts)
3. We don't know the whole story and I'm skeptical this is the whole truth. n/t

alarimer (12,656 posts)
235. It stinks to high heaven that right wing sites are the only place for "news" on this.

Not credible at all. Nor do I trust the parents here.

Bigger POS's there never were.

[Karin]

Oh that kcr creature was relentless in his defense of this monstrous nightmare.  Almost like he had a hand or a stake in it. 

[SVPete]

As the song goes, "There is none so blind as (s)he who will [/i]not[/i] see."

The girl went in a figure skater, and came out confined to a wheel chair! How tough is that to figure out?!