To agree with the Guardian about the Netflix coverage of the Lucy letby case?

[justwandered]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/feb/04/the-investigation-of-lucy-letby-review-netflix?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other]]

I honestly don’t think I’ve come across a show in such poor taste before and I am no stranger to stories about murder and the like.

It crosses a huge line in terms of stripping individuals of their dignity.

I don’t plan on watching it but when I turned Netflix on the other night to put a TV show on for my children there it was - horrid and completely unnecessary.

Surely there was even less reason to keep it then, if it was just a load of meaningless scrawls?

Go & look at Lucy letby analysis, they go through the evidence available with a fine tooth comb. Senior people contributing their experience, neonatal nurses, statisticians etc.

To her it would have meant somthing, but she had them in bags ready for disposal & like everything you don’t get round to it. Not really an indicator of murder though, thoughtlessness probably but sure in 2015 sure 90% nurses & midwives were guilty of the same thing.

It's not.

I also wondered how much LL’s documented health issues (hypothyroidism) were mentioned in court and how relevant this would be to the case on either side of the argument. Eg that hypothyroidism can in extreme cases cause psychosis and mental health issues , or on the flip side of the coin, poor recall, brain fog and lethargy? In the Netflix documentary when she is interviewed , the outer edge of her eyebrows appeared very sparse / non existent compared to earlier photographs, which is usually an indicator of hypothyroidism.

Jeepers I think I’ve got hypothyroidism. Contacting doc Monday. Thanks @Mundaywinner

I think the Morrisons bag under her bed had 31 sheets in it, 17 of which related to indictment babies (from memory - someone please correct me if wrong).

I am trying to find a source for that @NorfolkandBad it's been said a lot and I trust by people who have their sources. I will try and see if I can dig one out though.

Think she was being properly treated for it though? I have hypothyroidism and can attest to the brain fog and lethargy but my levels aren't back up to normal yet. Properly treated she shouldn't have had any issues.

There was only 5 handover sheets in that box and none of them related to the babies in the case.
https://lucyletbyinnocence.com/transcripts/searches+police-interviews-day1-baby-a-17-04-2023.pdf

Surely you know the answer to this already? You’re been on threads discussing this for months.

Shoo Lee authored a paper in 1989 that looked at reports of air embolism in neonates. He observed that arterial air embolism was associated with a rash or discolouration. He did not make this observation for babies with venous air embolism.

Evans, when looking at the babies’ notes, used the presence of a reported rash or discolouration to infer venous air embolism, based on Lee’s paper.

This was an incorrect inference; the presence of a rash or discolouration does not indicate venous air embolism. There is no evidence that air embolism was the cause of death.

This is the whole reason Lee has become involved; his paper has been misused as evidence of murders, whereas there are other much more likely explanations for the deaths, including sepsis which often presents with - yes, you guessed it - a rash or skin discolouration.

Im pretty sure that poster was talking NHE-wide, not the unit that Lucy was on that was downgraded and started taking in less premature and more healthy babies the exact same time she was suspended.

You can text hands free. It’s been possible for around fifteen years now.

Siri text mum. Mum I will be home late

Dr Lee, the author of the research, said that Dr Evans & the prosecution fundamentally misunderstood the science in his paper.

Dr Lee – the surviving author of that crucial 1989 paper – says the prosecution misinterpreted his research. He told reporters and later a panel of international neonatologists that the specific signs Evans pointed to (e.g. skin discolouration) do not reliably indicate venous air embolism and that the type of embolism described in his paper is a different clinical phenomenon.

furthermore Dr Lee is a rock star in the neonatal field:
As careers go, Shoo Lee’s is about as distinguished as a doctor can be. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada, and has held leadership roles at major hospitals and research institutes in Canada, the US, and Europe. He has helped shape neonatal care worldwide, serving on international advisory panels and founding multiple neonatal networks. A Harvard-trained health economist and Officer of the Order of Canada, Lee’s career spans decades of clinical practice, research, and policy in child health.

whereas Dr Evans isn’t even a neonatologist but a retired paediatrician
Dr. Dewi Evans, the prosecution’s expert medical witness who offered his services to police after reading a news report and thinking, “This is my kind of case”. He is a retired consultant paediatrician, and fellow of both the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. It was his interpretation of an obscure medical paper about neonatal death by air embolism that became central to sealing Letby’s conviction.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/who-is-dr-shoo-lee-and-why-is-he-at-the-centre-of-the-lucy-letby-innocence-campaign/ar-AA1VF0Qm

It discounts using a scientific research paper that the expert witness doesn’t have the specialised medical knowledge to properly understand.

I don't think the keeping of the handover sheets means she's guilty, but it really is odd and definitely not something most clinicians do. If ever I've come home with one by accident it has almost felt like contraband!

It is odd. It does need to be considered in the context of the campaign against her and the grievance she brought though.

I do wonder how often she has wished beyond anything that rather than raising a grievance she had just quietly done to another hospital with an agreed reference and a couple of thousand pounds in a settlement agreement.

Certainly sends a chilling message to anyone wanting to challenge our esteemed NHS, doesn’t it?

The Court of Appeal has already dealt with all of this.

Shoo Lee’s objections to the way his paper was used were dismissed by the CoA because, although the paper was one of 18 references cited in Dewi Evans’s report on the air embolism babies, it was never claimed that the skin discolouration was diagnostic of air embolism. For baby A for example, Evans diagnosed air embolism before he was even aware of the skin discolouration as he hadn’t seen the witness statement which described it.

The CoA also confirmed that Dewi Evans was suitably qualified to give the evidence that he did. He isn’t a neonatologist because he was looking after neonates before neonatology was a separate subspecialty of paediatrics. Here’s an extract from the CoA Judgment.

I would really recommend reading the Court of Appeal Judgment if anyone hasn’t yet done so and is interested in this case. It gives a really clear summary of a lot of what happened at the original trial and may also help answer some questions.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/R-v-Letby-Final-Judgment-20240702.pdf

I don't think anyone expected that the initial appeals were going to be heard, the applications were really just a formality.

Evans diagnosed air embolism before he was even aware of the skin discolouration as he hadn’t seen the witness statement which described it.

But how did he diagnose it?

He hadn't seen the baby in question, or clearly hadn't seen witness statements if he hadn't seen the one which said about the discolouration. The autopsies hadn't brought it up. The other professionals who were there at the time hadn't thought this.
None of the symptoms of air embolism are conclusive - they'd be present at most babies who have taken a fatal turn for the worse.

It is diagnosed in by a echocardiography or chest X-ray, which may show gas in the heart or vessels.

So why is this being treated as fact rather than a guess?

It's a very flawed document.

It shows that our legal systems, unfortunately, aren't good at dealing with science. I was genuinely shocked at some of the non sequiturs

And of course, it now claims that a murder method was used which the chief prosecution witness no longer endorses.

Good on Dr Lee for not giving up and leaving Lucy Letby to languish in prison. The new evidence brought since the application will, I hope, bring a retrial in the end. And I wonder what expert they will find who will be willing to argue the case for venous air embolism

Air embolism is one of the old reliables, basically, for sudden death that might have been invisible murders. The other symptoms he described were ridiculously vague, or actively contradictory, but unfortunately it was arguably not for the court of appeal to judge the quality of these arguments.

He diagnosed it from the medical records - the skin discolouration was not noted on these.

There was x ray evidence which the paediatric radiologist said was consistent with air embolism - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-63349341?app-referrer=deep-link#:~:text=Image%20source%2C%20SWNS,unusual%20about%20the%20X%2Dray.

And the prosecution’s neonatal pathology expert found globules in tissue samples from the lung and brain, which he concluded were most likely air and that baby A’s death was therefore explicable on the basis of air embolism.

The cause of death given by the pathologist who did the original post mortem was “unascertained”.

I don’t think Evans or other experts ever put this diagnosis forward as anything other than opinion - not sure who is treating it as fact?

Yip. I've seen firsthand how they scapegoat people for complaining!