Lucy Letby ( To understand)

[PassingStranger]

What made her kill these babies. Been in the news again today.

It's hard to understand?
Presume as she is in prison and not a hospital, she is not mentally ill?

Will anyone try to find out, I guess if people don't admit they are guilty it's hard too.

Instead of people saying give me 5 mins in a cell with her, surely it's better to stop this happening or maybe it's not possible?
Why does she want to be one of the most hated women in the universe and not give a shit about the babies families and even her own parents?

So much better to be known for doing something nice and have people like you?
AIBU to wonder why she took this road in life?

Yes, this is my thinking too :-)

Babies F and L were both found to have traces of medical insulin that would not have been produced naturally.

Not this again.

The babies were never tested for exogenous insulin. Nor was the TPN bag sent off for forensic testing. The claim that insulin was used is no more than that and is merely an inference made from the difference between insulin and c peptide levels in blood samples. (Insulin and c peptides are produced in equimolar amounts in the body). The test for insulin measures antibodies to insulin which are known to be easily contaminated by cross-reactants.

The kinetics of insulin and c peptides in preterm neonates are relatively unstudied, but one study highlights the following:

~ Preterm infant glucose-insulin metabolism differs significantly from adults.

~ Hyperglycemia in preterm neonates is common and associated with higher mortality

~ Insulin and c peptide levels are influenced by the organs that clear them - the kidneys clear c peptide and the liver and other tissues clear insulin.

~ C peptide is produced in equimolar quantities with insulin, and is principally cleared by the kidneys. Insulin is cleared by liver and peripheral tissues in a highly variable way, as well as the kidneys.

The physiology of neonates is immature and the variation in blood volume, liver metabolism and renal function affects the reliability of insulin and c peptides readings, so does cross reactivity with other proteins. This will produce very variable results requiring multiple samples to get a reliable reading, and very different readings to adults. Quite apart from the issue of incorrect storage and handling (which was denied but can’t be proven) and differing methods used by different labs producing variable results.

One of test result of 4657 pmol/L was so high as to kill an adults 4 times over. (A study of 12 suicides by insulin found the peripheral blood insulin found a maximum concentration of 930 pmol/L.)

The inventor of the test, Professor Vincent Marks, himself an expert witness at trials involving insulin, said the test should never be used in isolation due to the danger of false positives. He estimated the amount to kill an adult is around 1000 pmol/L.

@BouquetGarni224 Milestone dates = Texas sharp shooter fallacy.

For the baby in 2014?

from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4518212/amp/Baby-deaths-Countess-Chester-Hospital-probed.html

Melanie and Patrick Robinson’s baby, Noah, died after a series of blunders at the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2014.
Noah was born by Caesarean section 12 weeks early on March 20, weighing just 1lb 7oz, after Mrs Robinson developed potentially fatal pre-eclampsia.
Despite his size he was given a good chance of survival.

Noah was born by Caesarean section 12 weeks early on March 20, weighing just 1lb 7oz. Pictured: Baby Noahs foot and hand print with Melanie Robinson's wedding ring
But an inquest heard he died less than four days later after doctors mistakenly put a breathing tube into his gullet, which connects to the stomach. It should have gone into his trachea.
They also ignored five warning signs – from X-rays and other equipment, which they wrongly assumed were faulty. Mrs Robinson said there was only one senior doctor on duty when Noah began to deteriorate on March 22.
Recording a verdict of misadventure, coroner Nicholas Rheinberg told the inquest in Chester in February 2015: ‘There were very considerable signs [the tube was incorrectly positioned] and I find it surprising these signs were not realised.’
He said an assumption that equipment was faulty was ‘extraordinary’.
‘Shouldn’t the first assumption be the tube is in the wrong place, or that’s a strong possibility?’ he asked.
‘It’s like flying an aeroplane and seeing the oil gauge come on and you assume the gauge must be wrong, rather than the oil pressure is low.’
Mrs Robinson, who now has a daughter, was dismayed by the hospital’s level of care.
‘We put our trust in the doctors to look after Noah, but they didn’t do what they were supposed to,’ she said. ‘We feel terribly let down by the NHS.’

ok well we will have to agree to disagree that the jury would be wise/ intelligent/ morally upright to wildly speculate on information that has nothing to do with how and why the babies died , and then consider that “very seriously” as part of their decision to convict a person of murdering said babies 💁🏼‍♀️

They are not really equal in weight though, are they?

A guilty person often says they didn’t do something, but she also wrote “I did it I am evil”, “I killed them” etc in the comfort of her own home, under no duress and saved the note. Consider if you would write that if you were innocent.

The evidence has to be considered together, even she agreed in court someone had poisoned with insulin, but it wasn’t her 🙄

My knowledge in these areas extends to GPDR and the conditions of publication under the remit of UK law. My interest in the case is fairly disinterested. It certainly doesn't extend to reading 400-page blogs on the command of some stranger on the www who then becomes unfathomably irate because I CBA to comply with their orders. Frankly, I prefer to stay within my own remit and will therefore be finishing the fascinating tome on genetic avante-texts I'm currently reading instead😀

The other sources mentioned merely reported what happened. That's it. To have done more would have landed any UK journalist in court themselves on charges of contempt.

Why the concern with what I personally think? You appear to have given this more consideration than I've given it myself. Nobody actually gives a shit what I think; I'm not under any illusions to the contrary. Posting on MN is entirely for my own amusement.

The only people whose opinions on this case truly matter are the 24 men and women on the two separate juries. And their thoughts are unanimous. They find her guilty. And in sporadic dipping into this case across many months I've seen nothing (aside from a bunch of spurious online speculation from the usual brand of crackpot conspiracy theorist) which makes me question those verdicts.

Also to say the handover notes she took “correlated” to the victims I think is misleading, since of the 250 odd notes they found , only a fraction (20 odd) concerned babies who were the subject of the trial.

Doctor A was in his arse the target of unrequited messaging, he clearly lied in court, how he got away with that I don't know. He'd been to her house and trips to London with her and would buy her chocolates etc. He also let her borrow his car too.

An interim anonymity order is nothing like a restraining order, not sure how you mixed that up. That was just to stop him being named in the press because he had said he didn't think he'd be able to get on the stand if he was named publicly or something like that.

You'd love to know whey I stated there was no insulin deaths? Because there was no insulin deaths. Those babies didn't die.

Oh well done, I mixed up babies she managed to murder and babies she tried to. Still conceited by a jury of attempting it though.

RE Doctor A, you seek to not believe him, have accused him of perjury but yet have no evidence to support it. He was subject to an anonymity order yes. I didn’t mix this and a restraining order up. There’s one of those too but as you can’t search doctor A you can’t check the second part.

He clearly committed perjury, their messages showed that the messages were not unrequited. If the police had found any evidence of unrequited messages after that then the prosecution would have without a doubt used them in the court to show that, they also would have said he had a restraining order against her obviously because they would have seen that as proof she was unhinged.

He's been named now by mistake because the court forgot to redact his name when they released the reasons why her appeal failed. It's been redacted now.

You clearly know or are able to access an astounding amount of information on insulin. It’s not an area I would be able to question the science of so won’t attempt to. I am interested however in how if this is all so obvious to you (judging by your frustrated “not this again response”) then it will be to clinical experts.

So why if that’s the case was no one was brought in by the defence to dispute this? Surely a courtroom is the place to dispute evidence by actual professionals and clinicians in their field. As no one was, and still hasn’t been this leads me to think anyone they approached reviewed the material and declined? All the material that is, not what you have said here.

So she was convicted of these attempted murders by a jury of her peers. And still her defence haven’t brought forward this evidence? Maybe they should have asked you given that you are apparently the only person that seems able to dispute it and are enraged that we believe the legal convictions tested in court and not someone on mumnset.

But Rachel Aviv is also 'just a journalist', fact-checked or not. She has no more science background than Liz Hull or Caroline Cheetham, or not that I can find online.

What Hull and Cheetham write or podcast cannot be called gossip. It is based on listening to all the evidence at trial. Their podcast won News Podcast of the Year in the Press Awards, so their fellow journalists must have thought their work was good quality.

And the defence would likely make just such a claim. That's their job: to cast reasonable doubt on the prosecution's case.

It would then be down to the jury to decide how they interpret that evidence, taking into account all other evidence which completes that picture.

This is absolutely standard legal practice: there are no anomalies here. And if you think that evidence is dodgy, you want to see what they'll admit into US courts (and those are interesting, because you can sit through the entirety of the trial if you've a mind to and this really does show up the gaps in media reporting). I.e. cadaver dogs and all manner of speculative BS are admitted which would never see the light of day in any UK court. And this in a death penalty state, too.

Can you do anything other than parrot the catch phrases of one American attention seeking/name making journo - whose article has already been discredited.

Those milestone collapses & deaths were not coincidental.

*I am interested however in how if this is all so obvious to you (judging by your frustrated “not this again response”) then it will be to clinical experts.

So why if that’s the case was no one was brought in by the defence to dispute this? Surely a courtroom is the place to dispute evidence by actual professionals and clinicians in their field. As no one was, and still hasn’t been this leads me to think anyone they approached reviewed the material and declined? All the material that is, not what you have said here.*

I'm very interested in this too.

How come mirabai is apparently the QC LL should have had.... And her actual one was apparently Dumbo the clown?

And how come LL hasn't sought to replace Dumbo the clown at some point?

She had 257 sheets she claimed she took home accidentally.

One would have thought you might have been more careful to avoid "accidentally" taking home confidential patient records after the first 10 or maybe 20 (?)

She apparently also claimed she couldn't destroy them, but there was a paper shredder in her home.

Data protection and information governance is massive in the NHS. People get sacked for far less than this. We must never compromise sensitive patient data. It is drummed into us. I need to evaluate a service and I've had to fill in multiple documents and go to a review panel to get permission to ask patients to volunteer to give feedback. It's taken months - far longer than the actual work will take - to get sign off.

I mean - she's a convicted murderer and all that - but the IG breaches shows she's a wrong'un tbh.

Not sure why you are mansplaining the court/ legal practices to me?
Yeh all kinds of bullshit passes for evidence in US courts, and the LL case demonstrates that we are certainly not above it here either. The difference between the UK and the US is that we tend not to hand down such draconian sentences, however LL has been put away for the rest of her natural life on the basis of this bullshit.

Maybe they should have asked you given that you are apparently the only person that seems able to dispute it

She really really isn’t the only one, a lot of scientists and medics are disputing this and yes it’s absurd that the defence didn’t put an expert on the stand to point this out.

Probably a lack of empathy and distance from emotion. Maybe dissociation. She didn't see herself as she was for what she was doing. Or having done it once, and having crossed the line and gotten away with it, realised she didn't feel bad about it, but did like the thrill and temporary power it brought over her NHS peers and the families.

I don’t have them all but LL attacked Child G on his 100th day, which was celebrated with cake and balloons with the parents and nurses.

She also attacked him on his due date (I.e. the date on which he should have been born).

Two significant milestones that Letby knew about. The attacks left him severely disabled.

She also attacked Child D on Father’s Day, she described the dad as ‘screaming’ in her text messages.

Some of the evidence against Lucia de Berk case was that she had diary entries that made it look like she was obsessed with murder, she also had books about crime and murder, some which she'd stolen from the hospital, she also stole medical and patient files from the hospital! So there's similarities with Letby there but yet she was found not guilty on appeal.

I’ve no doubt there may be others who know about insulin but yes we are complete agreement that the absence of this evidence being brought as a defence and being legally tested is unusual if it is accurate. Which is why I’m inclined to believe the conviction is sound. The absence of defence around it is because saying things after the fact online, and staking your clinical reputation and credentials in court are two different things. And they could find no one credible to do that. Which is why she was convicted.

Ulitmately I believe she is guilty and my mind won’t be changed but I respect that everyone has their own opinion and basis for believing it and this has been a very interesting conversation.

Conflating these two cases, with on the surface similarities, is a bias.

The reasons for conviction and particularly the weight of the evidence in each case are very different when you scratch the surface, as are the judicial systems that led to it.

LL has lost at appeal and had been tried and found guilty on evidence at a separate trial.