Southall struck off

[ElenyaTuesday]

See here

Southall

do you all realise just how many massively life damaging mistakes are made by medical professionals every minute of every day.

of course motivation is relevant.

I just see that as messed up.

I've had to work with people who totally dicked up peoples' lives and they didn't feel any compunction for their actions and I have to say I found that chilling.

It's hard for me to bring myself to argue the toss for such individuals because on some level if you spend any length of time with such persons there is something instrinsically different about them which doesn't sit well with me on a personal level.

And FWIW, I'm pretty hard, as anyone here knows.

Absolutely, soph!

But why doesn't he admit he was in error, when he's been found to be several times over?

Is he that whacked?

Because you really have to wonder from the actions he continues to take.

Yes & how many mistakes are owned up to & lessons learnt from them?

Doctors are human beings & yes they mess up.

Thankfully for every one like Southall who messed up not just once but several times don't forget, there are thousand s& thousands who do brilliant job day in day out & then get tarred by the same brush as this pillock.

But Soph, they have medical ethics which make it very clear what behaviour is acceptable and what isn't. The point about Southall is that in these cases (getting involved in the Clark case, hiding medical records - assuming the things about the incubator are just unproven allegations at this stage) he was knowingly acting against medical ethics. Knowingly doing that is not the same as making an error while acting in accordance with the standards of your profession. I don't think it matters much whether he did this because he thought it would help other babies in the future or not.

Not so sure about that. If we think something is morally right, something that might save a child even our own child I suspect most of us would tear up the rule book and try to save that life. We might risk being struck off but we take the risk. I took a toddler off the street to a police station once. It was alone. I knew I was risking a kidnap charge but I wasn't prepared to see it die on the road.

i agree.

and i also feel that child protection is a particularly difficult area. just as no one likes a social worker, the same follows and in the end, in my book, ONE child's life saved is worth any amount of adult misery.

I don't mean it's never right to act against the rulebook, but you'd be judged by how good your reasons were for doing it, and what your assessment of the risks was like, wouldn't you?
Risking one child because you think it will save other children in the future would be a much greyer area again (if the worst of the allegations against Southall were to prove to be true).

and the fact that he has saved children's lives, and really contributed to peadiactrics (sp/) and child protection is beyond question and explicitly stated in the gmc report.

kathy (hello btw, i do know how to do your job based on the three fundamental tenets you told me), i guess my position is this: he may well deserve to be struck off. he absolutely does not deserve the moniker of 'evil' nor does he deserve vilification.

"ONE child's life saved is worth any amount of adult misery. "

Hmm. I find that quite an alarming assessment because you are thinking in such absolute terms.
And I wonder whether that includes the misery of the child who was wrongly taken from their parents, once s/he grows up and either learns the truth or is told that his/her parents tried to kill them.

You say one child's life saved is worth any amount of adult misery.
Two points. Not so sure you'd think that if your child was taken away, put into the dubious hands of the 'care' system and you never saw him again.
And children suffer terribly when they are taken away from their families in this awful, traumatic way. It's not just parents who suffer. Far from it. The child victims of Southall who are now allowed to speak out are very clear on this. Their lives were ruined.
As was Sally Clark's. we don't even know about most of the cases because of the secrecy laws. He was willing to 'diagnose' someone with Munchausens and to say their children should be taken away on the basis of watching a bit of a TV documentary and reading a Take A Break article. That's deranged.

But all his good work is negated by his unethical behaviour Sophable, he had no right to involve himself in the Sally Clark case for example & acted against medical ethics as Kathy says.

"ONE child's life saved is worth any amount of adult misery" Even if it means the adult ends up killing herself even though she was cleared of charges?

you're right it's all grey isn't it.

but i stand by the other bit of my post.

Very late to this thread! I don't know if its been said already but it's a great shame that people like Southall give the child abuse protection people a bad name. I'm very glad he's gone. But I have a very close relative in that field who has been involved in protecting children from abuse in council homes. Even one of his bosses was found guilty. I am horrified by what Southall has done and very glad not to call him doctor anymore, but not everyone in that arena is the same. I think the characteristic of arrogance is particularly attached to paediatricians though.

This isn't an issue of children's interests vs adult misery. This is state power versus powerless individuals. What about the misery of the children who are taken away from their families? Does that not matter?

This is a really, really important battle. The state is using its power against ordinary individuals in secret courts where they cannot get justice. This is barbaric. Taking children away from loving homes, does not stop child abuse; on the contrary, it is a form of child abuse.

As for motivation - well the white Australians who took Aborigine children away from their families and had them forcibly adopted by respectable christian whites, genuinely and sincerely believed that they were doing what was in the children's best interests - of course they weren't cruel, evil people ripping children from their parents for a larf. But shall we excuse them too, because they were good-hearted, sincere people who genuinely believed that "civilising" Aborigines and bringing up them as good Australian citizens, was the best thing for them and for society?

ALso I find it alarming that he keeps getting quoted for his "work as a paediatrician". He was a researcher & honorary consultant in paediatrics, he never held an official consultant paediatric post if I read the records correctly.

ok. why is the 'state' using that power against individuals?

Good point LB.

Good analogy LittleBella.

It also depends on what you mean by 'evil', of course.
Some people (a lot of Quakers, for instance) would say that no person is completely evil, even if they do evil things.

I think he does deserve to be villified, actually. The things he's done are inexusable. If he is too arrogant to realise that then he's not fit to be a doctor. As the GMC found.

Read the comments of the lad who is now an adult, whose life and parents' lives were ruined by Southall smearing them - unjustifiably. AND by Southall hiding crucial medical information in the secret files, against every rule and ethic of his profession. Information that could have helped to find out what was actually wrong.

God knows why Southall destroyed his own, previously-eminent career in such a way. Arrogance, perhaps. An overwhelming belief in his own righteousness, maybe. He seems to have believed not only in 'the best interests of the child' but that 'the best interests' were defined by 'whatever I say'.

No reasonable person would have muscled in on the Clark case while he was already suspended from child protection work. Had that family not bloody suffered enough at that stage? Oh no, not enough that poor Sally Clark was in prison, Southall had to jump in with his size 9s and threaten to have their surviving child taken off the one parent left to look after her.

'The Panel is aware that you are a paediatrician of international renown and that you have contributed significantly to the field of paediatrics and child protection.

The Panel recognises that your misconduct has arisen as a result of the child protection work that you were undertaking at that time and that your actions, although clearly misguided, may have been motivated by a concern to protect children. There is no evidence before the Panel to demonstrate that your actions have caused direct harm to patients or their families other than in cases involving child protection.'

from the gmc report.

so who is the 'state' acting against.

it seems to me that it is the attorney general's involvement that is why he has now been struck off, when previous judgements deemed him safe within the restructions and this panel acknowledges that all damage is historical.

you konw what mumsnet, there are really really fucked up people, mothers no less, out there, and they do harm their children.

people who work to protect them are villified (imo) because none of us like to acknowledge that fact.

it is the nature of the work that sometimes, very unfortunately, parents will be wrongfully accused.

LB has made a great point. Parents seem to come last in the list of people that courts and officialdom will listen to.

Good analogy, LittleSleighBella. The Australian authorities presumably believed or told themselves it was 'in the best interests' of Aboriginal children to be brought up by white families.

Soph, you are tilting at windmills. Claiming that criticism of Southall is tantamount to denying the existence of child abuse is a cheap debating trick.