Lucy Letby - have you changed your mind pt. 5

[Typicalwave]

New thread

Part 4 here - https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5400564-lucy-letby-have-you-changed-your-mind-thread-4?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

Originally started by @kittybythelighthouse

How have I done that? I was just using that screenshot as a random example of some of the abuse he gets and why I can’t blame him for publicly defending himself.

Pretty much, yes. She is a convicted serial killer!

Since retiring from clinical practice Dewi Evans has set himself up in business as a professional expert witness. One should be able to reasonably conclude that he has a deep and thorough understanding of what that role entails, and his responsibilities to the court.
It is entirely understandable and reasonable that the testimony he gave during the trial has been subject to rigorous scrutiny and robust criticism. If you read the transcripts you can literally see him backtracking, contradicting himself and obfuscating under oath. Some would conclude that he has a somewhat flexible relationship with facts.
A professional approach would be to do the job and then keep quiet until such time as his professional input was requested in an official capacity. This is what his fellow ‘expert ’ witnesses have chosen to do.
Instead he has repeatedly engaged with the public discourse and chosen to give multiple media interviews, in which he has unfortunately dug himself deeper and deeper into the mire of his own making. Every word he utters in public simply serves to confirm his lack of appropriate expertise and understanding of the role he was handsomely paid to perform.

Page 34 of this document, in the "learning" section re bile aspirates.

https://thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/evidence/inq0001888-draft-paper-from-the-countess-of-chester-hospital-titled-position-paper-neonatal-unit-mortality-2013-2016/

Lots of interesting stuff in that document.

For the resuscitation there's no single account, so you could either look at the press reports gathered at https://lucyletbyinnocence.com/Lucy-Letby-Case-3.html (especially Melanie Taylor, Sophie Ellis, Kathryn Davis) or at the same witnesses for accounts of the resuscitation at Thirlwall.

And before she was convicted?

Yep.

And while the gynae comment was, well, below the belt, it's a fact that his conduct means there are people who wouldn't trust him treating us or our loved ones if he were still in practice. Above or below the knee. He has done that to himself.

you replied directly yoy to my comment, claimed ‘this isn’t fair’ tgat I’m criticising his conduct in a specific context and then posted an egregious and entirely unfounded personal attack and insinuation about a professional qualification and what it allegedly implies he is.

And those ridiculous and frankly appalling types of insinuations have nothing whatsoever to do with reasonable challenge of his conduct as an expert witness.

It’s entirely fair to criticise and challenge him in that context.

And not forgetting of course that he has frequently cast aspersions on his critics and accused them of a sexual motive for supporting LL.

Which completely misses the point being discussed here, i.e should she have been convicted.

Oh yes, I forgot about that little gem.

I'm surprised I'm coming to their defence but I didn't read rubbishatballet's post as an attack on you - I thought the added SM comment was to show the sort of attack DE is under as an example of why he might want to defend himself. I'm in the camp that DE frankly should never have been an expert witness if he is unable to adhere to the expert code of conduct and that he is a disgrace to the professionals who do. However rubbish has been pretty courteous in their disagreement with the overwhelming majority view on this thread so I think you should give them the benefit of the doubt that they posted that in good faith.

Maybe I worded it wrongly - I didn't see it as an attack on me, just a completely misleading example.

I haven’t seen anyone on this thread deal low blows such at the X post. I think there’s been completely fair criticism of him on here.

Thank you @Londonmummy66, much appreciated!

OK - sorry my bad then. I agree that the criticism of DE has been evidence based and not unreasonable. I also feel that rubbish's way of disagreeing and debating is a pleasant counterbalance to someone else on here..................

id agree with you there

Sporty if I worded it wrong - I didn’t see ig ss an attack on me - but I did feel yhd example you provided whist saying my observations were unfair was rather misreading. No one is doing that here that I’ve seen towards Dewi.

If you’re going to be an expert witness and enjoy chasing high profile cases for payment and sit and ceremoniously present oneself as Omnipotent (which CPS lives Becsuse juries need certainty even though in many field it’s not possible and it’s disingenuous to claim, certainty in a field where things like air embolism are nigh on impossible to rule in or rule out) and then give interview after interview, then one has to be willing to be accepting to attracting fair criticism and flack.

I might be being dim but can we see from this that there definitely was time to check the aspirates before the baby died? I can only see there was a plan to repeat AXR but no time attached to when that plan was made. In my experience there can be a bit of a scrabble around to pick out as many learning points as possible when these sorts of reviews are undertaken, so the fact that it is a learning point may not necessarily precisely reflect the reality of the situation in terms of timings.

It's in the final column, the "learning", that you need to look. That notes that tests were not repeated despite continued aspirates, and the fact that it is in the "learning" column means that it should have been.

Peter Elston has now added a link to Evans's 2019 review of literature on air embolism
https://sll091-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/peterelston_sll091_onmicrosoft_com/EYUNSLnPJXxGmwf4HOt1NBMBbG0HhEIB-v1pyRAbYcxZIA?e=I0mjsq

In the introduction he says
I have prepared over 40 reports in relation to Operation Hummingbird. A number of my statements identify very significant concerns regarding the cause of the collapse and death of several babies. It is my opinion that the death of several infants is a consequence of inadvertent introduction of air into their circulation, and that this was intentional 😬

How can it be both inadvertent and intentional??

Well quite

Reply to @rubbishatballet

There was certainly time for the tests to be done. The whole point of this review was to look at care and missed opportunities in the hours leading up to a deterioration, so the idea that the hospital was just scrabbling around for things to put in the "learning" column doesn't hold water. The child had dark aspirates throughout the day and into the night on 13th June, with no testing after 12th June. Despite this he was started on feeds. If it had simply been a matter of having to wait for tears, they wouldn't start feeds.

You asked where the hospital said tests weren't conducted and should have been. This is where they say it. I find the suggestion that they are just coming up with things for the learning column really unconvincing. Look at the other entries. Some have nothing in the learning column. Some items listed there have question marks against them. This is listed unambiguously, and the idea that the child was killed before tests could be carried out or ordered is not tenable. They should have transferred the child out to a level 3 unit if they didn't have capacity, but since the tests were never ordered and feeding went ahead, it's obviously not a matter of running out of time.

I have another word for Dewi: oxymoron - without the humour or dramatic effect.

Sure, people were also criticising Mark McDonald for not releasing all his reports either, and I understand why he didn't, so the same would apply on the other side, I just see it as extremely unlikely because he hasn't been able to shut up so far,

I’m not sure I agree there is certainty about this. This is a fairly high level mortality review, not a detailed review of this baby.

Did the baby’s condition actually worsen before the collapse at 11pm so that a repeat AXR could be done as per the plan? And if not, would it even be feasible to do an abdominal x-ray on a baby that has collapsed? (I don’t know, I’m not a neonatologist). Could it not be possible that there is more detail about the exact timings in the baby’s medical records that Dewi Evans is privy to and we are not?