STORY: "New Brunswick warned about using flawed Motherisk drug tests," by reporter Karissa Donkin, published by CBC News On April 4, 2016.
SUB-HEADING: "Letters obtained by CBC News show warnings came months before officials backed away from hair testing."
PHOTO CAPTION: "New Brunswick child and youth advocate Norman Bossé is worried about how flawed drug tests may have been used against parents."
GIST: "The New Brunswick government was directly warned months ago about problems with hair-based drug tests, according to new documents obtained by CBC News. Letters and emails sent to government officials highlighted serious shortcomings with Motherisk's tests, which were often used in child protection cases where the custody of a child was at stake. Despite the warnings, months passed before officials announced a review of how it used tests from the Motherisk lab at The Hospital for Sick Children. The letters were sent by Sick Kids and the Ontario government in December and January, after an Ontario review found serious problems with Motherisk's practices. Dozens of pages of documents released under right to information legislation detail those warnings and show how officials crafted messages about New Brunswick's use of hair testing, before backing away from hair testing entirely. The province's child and youth advocate is questioning what the provincial government did with the drug tests after receiving the warnings. "Whether or not the province through [the Department of] Social Development used testing results in December 2015, January 2016 after these notices came out, I don't know and I would be concerned if they did," Norman Bossé said. Sick Kids admits the drug and alcohol tests produced at Motherisk are unreliable and may be inaccurate. The hospital estimates as many as 1,400 people from New Brunswick had at least one hair sample tested at its now-closed Toronto lab. Hundreds of those people produced at least one positive result between 1997 and 2015. What isn't clear is how those tests were used in New Brunswick. The Department of Social Development hasn't said how many of those tests it ordered. And Sick Kids says it often didn't know who ordered the test unless it was contacted to help interpret the results.........Attorney General Serge Rousselle was sent a letter in January from The Hospital for Sick Children, apologizing for shortcomings with Motherisk's drug testing. (Karissa Donkin/CBC) For months, the New Brunswick government said it would continue to use hair testing from other labs and only review individual closed cases upon request.That position changed in March, when the department committed to reviewing every case. It also placed a ban on the use of all hair testing, admitting there are questions about the reliability of the science. Ontario introduced a similar ban, but nearly a year earlier, in April 2015."
The entire story can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.
Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
