Meadows found guilty of professional misconduct by GMC

[mummytosteven]

HERE

as I said on another thread on this topic a while ago, it is staggering to think that mothers have been imprisoned for life on the strength of one ' opinion' - no facts, witnesses etcetera - I can't see how this could ever have been allowed to be frank. Obviously this man's power and influence just grew and grew until his word was the law. I cannot think of any other murder trials where a defendant was found guilty solely as a result of someone's 'opinion'. Shocking.

Hmm - angst - no. Teenage - long gone are the days. Poetess - no definitely not - that requires time!

What pisses me off is the College of Paediatricians constantly bleating on about how this will stop paediatricians from acting as expert witnesses. What, because they won't be allowed to make statements which are wholly outside their competence and based on their own mysogyny? Good thing too, then. I don't think the legal system needs expert witnesses like that.

I'm glad he's been found guilty too and agree about the misogyny involved in these cases.

I think Highlander raised the real issues of this case yesterday (posted at 4.15pm)- it was a deeply flawed system which allowed this man's word to become incontrovertible. Doubts about convictions based on a diagnosis of msbp were expressed to those in and out of Government as long as 10 years ago (namely to one Jack Straw when he was shadow Home Secretary among others). The answer was always the same - "we have made a note of these concerns".

I'm not defending Meadow either and I am concerned that by striking him off now, other claims against him may not happen. But I am concerned that demonising one person may stifle reasonable debate on this. He may have dreamed up msbp and arrogantly pushed it until it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, but a whole raft of professionals bought into it too.

Precisely. The whole scare mongering strategy of saying no one would want to become a paediatrician was challenged today on Radio 4. I was flitting about and only just caught it so couldn't say who it was (I should listen again really) but it was good to hear some common sense on the matter for a change.

(Hmmm, if not Caligula then who...? Own up, don't be shy!)

Agree with the general views on this, as one friend who lost her child to SIDS said, 'he made us all feel like murderesses, whether we were directly accused or not'.

Do you think there's an issue on statistics here as well though? I mean, I can't remember the exact stats he gave, but if say 1 in X million women had multiple infant deaths within her family, then why would the jury automatically decide this WASN'T the one in X million? People seem to put a lot of atore by stats these days, when they don't tell you much about the individual case tbh.

We'll never really know if Meadows was lying or not but anyone that thinks he shouldn't be accused of lying should try and see how suspicious it really does look. As such a prominent doctor there's no way on this earth he should have been more 'dense' or 'naive' than the average person, else how did he get to where he was. Yet even someone with average intelligence could easily tell you that, regardless of stats, if one child in a family can die of unknown causes then 2 can, or 3, or 50. It was ludicrous to assume 1 was fine, 2 was dodgy, and 3 was criminal. And I don't see any possible way someone with enough nous to get where Meadows was could not have that basic sense to realise even that.

So, just on that one small point he was either mentally unfit to do his job or a cruel mysogynist - you choose which.

Granted many of the cases Meadows was involved in seemed a bit suspicious but our justice system says you are innocent until proven guilty, for good reason. Not innocent until suspected of being guilty or innocent until probably guilty - PROVEN guilty. Meadows didn't prove it, experts supporting Meadows didn't prove it, the courts didn't prove it (in the overwhelming huge majority of cases, I'm not saying everyone accused is innocent).

And for that everyone involved in the decisions to take, and keep, children away from their parents is guilty of a gross miscarriage of justice which, like others, should be put right immediately. Its true you can't have kids 'unadopted' but you can get them back where they should never have left in the first place. The victims deserve compensation, it won't make up for their loss but sadly some people only take note when money is involved.

And Meadows has come out of all this extremely well and deserves whatever he gets.

I agree that the argument about paediatricians not wanting to act as expert witnesses in the wake of the Meadow case is not a sound one.

The obligation on an expert witness to tell the 'truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" includes an obligation to make clear the limitations of your opinion or the science on which it is based. IME doing that strengthens rather than weakens ones position as expert (and no, I don't work in the child protection field, before you all come and get me). It is standard Defence Counsel strategy to imply that you are merely a prosecution stooge (or vice versa),and saying, "I have written exactly the same report as I would have written if instructed by the other side" is quite a powerful line.

I have also not encountered the pressure that the media talk about to tweak my evidence according to the side that instructed me. A great deal of prosecution work consists of telling police officers that their evidence won't do what they want it to do; conversely, a lot of defence work consists of telling solicitors that the evidence does indeed point to their client's involvement. IME most people take this on the chin, although you do get the odd crap solicitor saying, "We want you to write a report showing that our client is innocent".

On the other hand, I think it is unlikely that Meadow deliberately lied in the witness box in order to take children away from mothers whom he knew to be innocent. It is far more likely that he got so caught up in his own wonderfulness that he failed to acknowledge to himself or to the Court the potential limitations to his theories. And the legal system as it stands does tend to feed this sort of attitude, as it's based on showmanship in the witness box.

The case is not dissimilar to that of the lipreader who was the subject of a recent investigation by Newsnight. I'm vaguely familiar with the details of her case, and she is in fact a very good lipreader, but was brought down by reckless overconfidence in her own abilities.

I think he thought all mothers were inherently bad - for reasons we can only guess at - and his mission in life was to get kids away from their mothers. And he would lie his head off if it meant achieving his aim. I think he was mad.
I find all the doctors saying how wonderful he was absolutely sickening.

I'm inclined to agree with you Aloha, if only on instinct.

For reasons that are obvious to many of you I would like to read this whole thread before I make too many comments.

The only thing I will say is that he got 'struck off' while my DS was staying with me and first of all I felt as if I could not have asked for anything better to happen, as we could discuss it. The problem was we wanted to keep things quite 'light-hearted' but my DS has asked for some court reports that Meadows wrote which is a good thing. The other thing he said is, "I would like to meet this bloke who thinks it's alright to screw up peoples lives and then call it a syndrome".

I am now wondering if I am wrong to be pleased he was struck off now, because many women, including myself had complaints waiting in the pipeline against him. Those complaints are now never going to be heard, people are not going to realise the full and horrific damage that he did to families, not just the ones in the press but the hundreds who had been gagged. The GMC had applied in many cases to the Royal Courts of Justice (RCJ) and although the 'gags' would not have been lifted as far as the names of those persons involved were etc. It was going to be the nearest that we could ever come to get him to justify his actions.

I am pleased he has been struck off. I feel cheated that he has got away with so much more and I wanted to feel as if I had 'closure' and I do not. Perhaps this makes me a very vindictive person, I do not want to be, but to be honest being struck off is going to make no difference to him what so ever in my opinion....

I could go on....and on....but I shall read this thread properly as I am certain that you have all put views that have not even crossed my mind.

Bunglie- you wanted closure for yourself and for your suffering caused by him to be recognised officially. That's totally understandable. I'm so pleased you are able to see your son now.

Bunglie, I did wonder if DS was going to be aware of this - how weird that it happened while he was with you.

Is there any chance at all that you could bring some kind of private prosecution against Meadow? Not to be vindictive, but to get it into the open and maybe get some kind of closure for all of you - could you ask your contacts?

frogs great post, wish I'd written it. One of the problems with our medical system is that doctor are trained to be arrogant. They are told the patient will be reassured by the doctor stating their opinion firmly and not expressing doubts. When they become consultants they have lots of people praising them. Their junior doctors practically have to toady to them to get a good reference. Over time some gradually come to think they really are wonderful. It is a standard joke amongst non-medics working with consultants that doctors think God sits at their right hand

This doesn't necessarily prevent them being good doctors. I'm sure Meadows did do a lot of good for some of the patients he treated as a paediatrician. It does mean that they don't always make good expert witnesses.

Bunglie have you taken advice on sueing him? He would probably be insured by the Medical defense Union and after being struck off I imagine they'd settle out of court. I know money is no recompense but it does make other doctors think twice before they split up families. It is also a step towards closure.

I do not mean to hijack your thread, but do you mind if I make a link to mine.......

Bunglie asks should he have been struck off