Lucy Letby press conference

[Viviennemary]

There is a press conference going on now trying to get Lucy Letby's conviction overturned. From what I read the guilty verdict was sound. All those ill babies dying when she was alone with them. Just a coincidence? Already been refused an appeal.

I really think she was keeping notes and looking families up as she knew those babies hadn’t been cared for properly. It would only take one doctor to realise she was aware of the failings to then get defensive

1. The hospital managers protected her for a long time and blocked many attempts by the consultants to trigger investigations to determine whether she might be carrying out deliberate harm.

2. They are being held to account, via the Thirlwall Inquiry.

It wouldn't be the first time that's happened.

They should have established these poor babies cause of death before she was arrested, if there is no evidence of murder and they all died of natural causes or failures by the doctors then she needs to be released and compensated, the hospital need to be held to account and the whole unit and doctors investigated.

I think they already had ruled natural causes for some

Indeed they may be held to account by the Thirlwall Inquiry, but they are not (yet) facing any sanction for the bullying and mismanagement that has been reported in Thirlwall documents. There is a context to all of this which sadly includes a lack of decent, moral leadership.

I think people would find the idea that the system is so broken multiple babies are dying from things they shouldn't have died from a lot more distressing than a one off crazy murderer. You don't have to worry your child will die that way because it's very very rare, whereas ongoing issues within the NHS that are killing multiple babies in NICU point to a wider risk that your child may die from something treatable. Although a baby murderer is more shocking and has a big upfront horrifying impact, the chance my child will die from something trestable due to negligent standards of care worries me far more.

As someone who has often claimed their own blood runs NHS blue, my growing sense is that this is an absolute failure to care for women and babies safely. Even worse, it is almost certainly the tip of a very large iceberg of institutional failure in the NHS, due in large part to decades of underfunding.

If people are so convinced of Letby's guilt why would they be against a retrial where the evidence of Dr Lee can be heard. His research was used to convict her. He says his research has been misrepresented. I don't understand on what basis the High Court didn't think this was worth a review.

Because she’s had a trial and appeals, her case is now with the CCRC. This is the proper process.

This isn’t the X factor it’s not a decision made on the basis of ill informed public opinion .

Weren't the maternity ward deaths higher than average too during the same period? Yet this was never investigated because LL had no access to these wards.

Logically they need to look at ALL relevant deaths during the time period. Not just ones their target was involved with. The consultants were moving between these two areas of the hospital but LL wasn't.

And maybe read the court judgments instead of basing your understanding of the judicial process on TikToks

Don't be facetious, of course it's not the X factor. There are some people who are against a retrial which is what I don't understand. I am pro the case going through the proper channels, I just hope it doesn't take 20 years like in other cases. It's not just Letby's life at stake, it's potentially the lives of those who are still being treated with shoddy care. It's also the parents who have to live with this over years whilst the "proper process" is followed. We all know how this goes. It takes years.

Maybe try formulating an actual argument rather than being a patronising prick.

If it is found (and it looks like it will be) to be medically proven that no murders happened what would she be retried for?
I agree it's disgraceful, I watched that press conference absolutely astounded. I don't think the journalists who were there and knew what was coming expected it to be so definitive.

I am against a retrial because it is a huge waste of tax payer money.

I did CBT for a while after trauma of an abusive marriage, horrible divorce and family court etc. It hugely affected my confidence and ability to socialise.

One of the things I was encouraged to do as part of the process was to write down all the things I was worried about a situation. So as a menial example if someone walked past me and ignored me I had to write down the reasons my brain would jump to. So I'd write things like 'she hates me', 'she's avoiding me', 'she finds me annoying' or whatever. Then I had to counter these by challenging myself to think of alternative options e.g. 'she didn't see me', 'she's in a rush' etc.

I see LLs notes as the same sort of thing. She's writing what people are saying about her (e.g. 'I'm guilty') but then challenging this (e.g. 'I'm innocent').

Ah well that's alright then. International leading neonatal and paediatric experts have investigated each death in painstaking detail and said there is no evidence of murder, but let's throw away the key and pin her as a serial baby murderer as we don't want to waste our precious taxpayer money.

God this type of shit gives me the rage. It's so Daily Mail. And the irony is the amount of taxpayer money that gets swallowed into the black hole that is the crumbling, dirty, unsafe NHS - the failings of which directly caused the deaths of these babies according to this expert panel.

@chouxchoux but they haven't, have they? She murdered them. I don’t know why people are so insistent on her being innocent. She was proven guilty.

If the babies were not murdered, which is the conclusion of the experts, then all she is guilty of is being in the wrong place at the wrong time and not being a "sympathetic" defendant.

That means nothing these days, if they weren't murdered then she's clearly not guilty.

The experts who refuse to put their names to the things they're saying?

She was found guilty by a jury who were presented shoddy medical evidence by Dr Dewi Evans, who by his own admission is not an expert. He said under cross exam "I call myself an independent medical witness, not an expert". He touted his 'services' to Cheshire Police for an enormous fee and then created a narrative to fit the charges. His assertion that babies died of air embolism were based on a 1989 paper by Dr Shoo Lee. Dr Shoo Lee himself has been very clear that his literature has been misused by Evans, that he does not believe any of these babies were murdered, and has given detailed reasonable cause for each death - you can find the summaries of the expert panel's findings online. I've linked this below.

Some places to start:

• Dr Phil Hammond's special reports in Private Eye - https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/lucy-letby
• Was There Ever a Crime? podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/was-there-ever-a-crime-the-trials-of-lucy/id1616634411
• Summary report by the international expert panel, released yesterday - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aV4zwwdBYw8Z_E-Tpe9_-iPR7n8cZdFk/view

Only one has chosen to remain anonymous. The rest of them are listed in the summary. Here you go.

Members of the panel are:

1. Shoo K. Lee, OC, DHC, PhD, FRCPC, MBBS (Chair)
Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Canada
Honorary Physician, Mount Sinai Hospital
President, Canadian Neonatal Foundation

2. Eric Eichenwald, MD, FAAP
Professor of Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania, USA
Chief of the Division of Neonatology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Holder of the Thomas Frederick McNair Scott Endowed Chair.

3. Helmut Hummler, MD
Senior Medical Director, European Foundation for Care of Newborn Infants, Germany

4. Tetsuya Isayama, MD, MSc, PhD
Head of Division of Neonatology, National Center for Child Health and Development,
Tokyo, Japan
Japan Director, Asian Neonatal Network

5. Joanne Langley, MD. MSc, FRCPC. FSHEA, FIDSA, FPIDS
Head of Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Dalhousie University, Canada
Professor, Departments of Pediatrics and Community Health & Epidemiology, Faculty of
Medicine, Dalhousie University
Holder of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research – GlaxoSmithKline Chair in
Pediatric Vaccinology, Dalhousie University
Active Staff, Pediatric Infectious Diseases, IWK Health Centre

6. Neena Modi, MB ChB; MD; FRCP; FRCPCH; FFPM; FMedSci
Professor of Neonatal Medicine & Vice-Dean (International), Imperial College London
Honorary Consultant, Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust
President, European Association of Perinatal Medicine

7. Sandra Moore, RN
Staff Nurse, NICU, Southlake Regional Health Center, Newmarket, Canada
Sullivan Medicolegal Experts, Richmond Hill, Ontario

8. Mikael Norman, MD, PhD
Professor/Senior Physician, Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and
Technology, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
Chairman, Swedish Neonatal Quality Register
Founder, International Society of Evidence-Based Neonatology (EBNEO)

9. Bruno Piedboeuf, MD, FRCPC
Professuer Titulaire en Pediatrie, Universitaire Laval, Canada
Coordonnateur des Services Cliniques du RUIS de l’Universite Laval
Directeur des Affaires Universitaires, Ministere de la Sante et des Services Sociaux du
Quebec

10. Prakeshkumar Shah, MSc, MBBS, MD, DCH, MRCP, FRCPC
Professor of Pediatrics, University of Toronto, Canada
Head, Department of Pediatrics & Maternal-Infant Care Research Center, Mount Sinai
Hospital
Senior Clinician Scientist, Lunenfeld-Tannenbaum Research Institute
Director, International Network for Evaluation of Outcomes for Neonates (iNEO)
Director, Canadian Preterm Birth Network
Scientific Advisor & Past Director, Canadian Neonatal Network

11. Nalini Singhal, MBBS, FRCPC
Professor Emeritus, University of Calgary, Canada
Co-Editor of WHO/AAP Helping Babies Survive Programs

12. Erik Skarsgard, MD, MSc, FRCSC, FACS, FAAP
Professor, Division of Pediatric Surgery, University of British Columbia, Canada
Director, Canadian Pediatric Surgery Network

13. Ann R. Stark, MD, FAAP
Professor in Residence of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, USA
Director of Faculty Development, Department of Neonatology, Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center.

One member of the panel has chosen to remain anonymous for the time being.

So it’s better to let possible miscarriages of justice happen and have innocent people in prison?