PUBLISHER'S VIEW: It looks like leopards really don't change their spots. This is the hospital that leaned backwards to support and protect the notorious former Dr. Charles Smith - at the expense of the public (let alone its young patients) - and then allowed him to slink quietly into the night (and get a job at another hospital) when he just got too hot too handle. Hospital for Sick Children. Sick hospital? Still?
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
STORY: "Critics denounce continued use of controversial Motherisk hair tests," by reporter Rachel Mendleson, published by the toronto star, on April 16, 2015.
SUB-HEADING: "Group that fights for the wrongly convicted suggests Sick Kids might ‘have discovered more problems’ with challenged drug and alcohol tests."
GIST: "The “stakes are too high” to allow the Hospital for Sick Children’s Motherisk laboratory to perform hair drug and alcohol tests for use in court, the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) says. In a letter to retired Appeal Court Justice Susan Lang, who is probing the reliability of five years’ worth of drug tests on hair conducted by Motherisk, AIDWYC’s James Lockyer argues that such analysis should only be done in a forensic lab, which has more rigorous standards than a hospital setting. The letter is also highly critical of both Sick Kids and Motherisk founder and director Gideon Koren. Lockyer said the hospital must explain why it allowed Koren to rise to such a prominent position in light of his “torrid past” and why it “so vigorously” defended him “in the media in the face of calls for a review of Motherisk’s work.” Motherisk has provided hair drug and alcohol tests in criminal and child-protection cases, where it is typically used as evidence of parental substance abuse, in courts across Ontario and Canada, as the Star has reported.........Lockyer has first-hand knowledge of the issues currently under scrutiny. He represented Toronto mom Tamara Broomfield last year in the Appeal Court case that first raised questions about the reliability of the hair drug analysis Koren presented at her 2009 criminal trial.........Lockyer said the public has the right to know more. “It raises the suggestion that they have discovered more problems . . . with the work that Motherisk has done, but we don’t know, and we’re entitled to know,” Lockyer said in an interview. “They’re a public hospital, and they should be open to the public.” Motherisk is accredited as a clinical lab. But during Broomfield’s appeal, an expert for the defence, Craig Chatterton, the deputy chief toxicologist in the office of the chief medical examiner in Edmonton, said the hair drug test should have been conducted in a forensic lab. Chatterton said the test Motherisk used to analyze Broomfield’s son’s hair in 2005 — called immunoassay — was a “preliminary” screening test. He said the result should have been confirmed with a gold-standard test, which it was not. In defending the Motherisk program in the press, Sick Kids initially relied on the opinion of toxicologist Douglas Rollins, who conceded under cross-examination that hair drug tests presented in court should be performed in a forensic lab. In the letter to Lang, Lockyer says Koren’s testimony at the Broomfield trial, in which he described the immunoassay technique as “robust,” was “misleading.” Other Motherisk employees, Lockyer writes, “were equally reticent in their failure to inform the court that the immunoassay methodology was universally recognized in their profession as being merely a preliminary screening test.” Lockyer said AIDWYC’s characterization of Koren’s past as “torrid” relates to a 2003 incident in which Koren was reprimanded and fined $2,500 by the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons for penning harassing, anonymous letters to colleagues during a dispute over research by fellow Doctor Nancy Olivieri. Amid questions about ties between Koren and Duchesnay, Sick Kids recently confirmed it has temporarily reassigned medical oversight of Motherisk, which also counsels pregnant women on which medications are safe to take."
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2015/04/16/critics-denounce-continued-use-of-controversial-motherisk-hair-tests.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
