Bad Medicine Parents the State and the Charge of “Medical Child Abuse”

218 University of California, Davis [Vol. 50:205
Council declared that Dr. Meadow had violated his expert authority,
which “carried with it a unique responsibility to take meticulous care
in a case of this grave nature.” Presaging later criticisms of
pediatricians who specialize in child abuse, including those made in
this article, the General Medical Council continued: “You should not
have strayed into areas that were not within your remit of expertise.
Your misguided belief in the truth of your arguments is both
disturbing and serious.” 50
B. The Rise of the Medical Child Abuse Diagnosis
England’s disillusionment with MSBP did not diminish pediatricians’
zeal to root out problematic parental behavior on this side of the
Atlantic, however. Instead, the controversies surrounding MSBP
prompted innovation. Beginning in the mid-1990s and culminating in
their 2008 book Medical Child Abuse, two physicians — Carole Jenny,
death-trial.html (Donna Anthony) (noting that Anthony, who had been jailed for life
after being “convicted of killing [her] children largely on the strength of Prof.
Meadow’s discredited evidence,” was “cleared on appeal”); Mother Cleared of Killing
Sons, BBC NEWS (Dec. 10, 2003, 9:01 PM GMT), http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/
uk_news/england/wiltshire/3306271.stm (Angela Canning case) (“[O]n Wednesday,
the Court of Appeal overturned the conviction . . . . Her appeal has been the last of
three major cases to receive high-profile attention because of the prosecution’s
reliance on evidence from two main scientific experts.”); Stewart Payne, Joy for Mother
Cleared of Baby Deaths, TELEGRAPH (June 12, 2003, 12:01 AM BST),
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1432760/Joy-for-mother-cleared-of-babydeaths.html
(Trupti Patel case) (“The jury’s swift acquittal of Mrs. Patel, who was
charged with the murders of her sons Amar, aged three months, and Jamie, aged 15
days, and her daughter Mia, aged 22 days, came five months after the Court of Appeal
quashed the convictions of Sally Clark . . . for killing her two baby sons. Two experts,
who were largely discredited for the evidence they gave against Mrs. Clark — Prof.
Roy Meadow and Prof. Michael Green — also testified against Mrs. Patel.”).
50 Martin, supra note 49 (quoting General Medical Council’s opinion). The
General Medical Council’s comments resemble those made eight years later by a U.S.
federal district judge about expert testimony regarding Shaken Baby Syndrome. The
court ruled that the child abuse pediatrician’s testimony at trial had turned out to be
“more an article of faith than a proposition of science.” Del Prete v. Thompson, 10 F.
Supp. 3d 907, 957 n.10 (N.D. Ill. 2014); see also infra notes 299–315 and
accompanying text (discussing child abuse pediatrician’s flawed expert testimony in
Shaken Baby Syndrome cases).
Although the General Medical Council removed Meadow’s ability to practice because
of his “erroneous” and “misleading” testimony, see David Batty, Q&A: Sir Roy Meadow,
GUARDIAN (Feb. 17, 2006, 10:33 AM GMT), https://www.theguardian.com/
society/2006/feb/17/NHS.health, that decision was subsequently overturned by the Court
of Appeals. See Joshua Rozenberg, Sir Roy Meadow, the Flawed Witness, Wins GMC
Appeal, TELEGRAPH (Feb. 18, 2006, 12:01 AM GMT), http://www.telegraph.co.
uk/news/uknews/1510798/Sir-Roy-Meadow-the-flawed-witness-wins-GMC-appeal.html.