[h=1]The New Child Abuse Panic[/h] By MAXINE EICHNERJULY 11, 2015
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. ? FEW things are tougher for a parent than dealing with a child?s serious medical condition, particularly if it is complicated and hard to diagnose. The parent has to make hard choices about treatment, navigating conflicting advice from doctors or even rejecting one doctor?s opinion and seeking another.
Recently, the situation of these parents has gotten even harder. Some doctors and hospitals have begun to level a radical new charge ? ?medical child abuse? ? against parents who, they say, get unnecessary or excessive treatment for their kids. That this care is usually ordered by other doctors hasn?t protected parents from these loaded accusations.
Although most of these cases have nothing to do with real child abuse, credulous child welfare officials have too often supported the doctors, threatened parents with loss of custody, and even removed kids from their homes ? simply because the parents disagreed with the doctor?s plan of care.
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Dr. Richard G. Boles, a mitochondrial disease specialist who has worked on some 100 cases involving suspected medical child abuse, said that only about five fit the classic Munchausen situation and should be considered abuse. Of the rest, he says, about two-thirds involved a demanding mother who got on a doctor?s nerves; the remainder involved a parent who was too anxious in dealing with doctors who couldn?t give adequate answers.
Compounding the problems with the overly broad definition of medical child abuse is the considerable misinformation spread by its proponents. In 2013, a governor?s task force in Michigan stated that ?many cases of Medical Child Abuse go undetected because caregivers are skilled at deceiving the medical community.? No hard evidence, however, suggests that such parents are anything but rare. Medical child abuse is far more likely overcharged than undercharged.
The task force identified these warning signs of medical child abuse: a ?highly attentive parent? who is ?unusually reluctant to leave his/her child?s side?; a parent who ?demands second and third opinions?; a parent who ?is not relieved or reassured when presented with negative test results and resists having the child discharged from the hospital?; and a parent who has ?unusually detailed medical knowledge.? These warning signs accurately describe many, if not most, loving parents of medically fragile children.
In its zealotry, the medical child abuse movement resembles two other panics from the recent past: the sex-abuse panic of the 1980s and 1990s and, more recently, the panic over shaken-baby syndrome. In both panics, experts saw foul play where none existed, government officials took their views at face value, and people were wrongly convicted and imprisoned, their lives ruined. Medical child abuse is causing similar harm...
