During a rare foray into my emails, mostly spam anyway, I came across this monstrosity:
medical kidnapping.

Medical kidnapping is the phenomenon of the state taking children away from their parents and putting them into foster care, “simply because the parents did not agree with a doctor regarding their prescribed medical treatment for the family,” according to the book, “Medical Kidnapping: A Threat to Every American Today.”

This is one of the most ill-conceived projects undertaken by our expanding police state, which by virtue of this policy, is able to destroy the family unit simply because a parent disagrees with a medical diagnosis foisted upon them by a physician or physicians. The underlying premise, as you can read in the cited link is that physicians are always correct, even when their diagnosis is "I don't know what's wrong". The usual terminology employed by physicians who thusly demonstrate their lack of knowledge is to say "It's all in their heads", i.e., psychosomatic.

I wish physicians could be almost infallible, but that just isn't so and never will be so. The number of variables to be considered in many medical dilemmas can be, and often is, absolutely staggering. Most modern pediatricians see over 100 patients daily. Even with so-called physician extenders (something like medical Viagra) to lessen the physician load, diagnosing young children, many of whom are preverbal, can be daunting.

Although the usual pediatric ailments, excluding inborn errors of metabolism, which are genetically determined, are viral or bacterial or traumatic, every busy practice is absolutely going to contain medical outliers. Most GPs, FPs, and pediatricians are simply not going to be experienced enough to recognize such things as mitochondrial diseases, rare bacterial and or viral agents. Many simply do not take the time to thoroughly obtain a good history from patient and parent.

Like Hillary Clinton, many doctors will excuse away their own knowledge failings, lacking the integrity to simply state "I don't know what's wrong. You should get another opinion." This deterioration of medical integrity is obviously foisted upon the unsuspecting public due to quite a few variables, of which this is a partial listing:

1. Increased remuneration of a physician by requiring return visits in lieu of either more sophisticated testing or appropriate referral.

2. Administrative overload foisted upon physician practices by insurance company and / or governmental bureaucracy.

3. The now universal requirement of electronic medical records (EMR), which are meant to increase medical information portability, but in reality result in hurried, incomplete, often pro forma information entries. These data points usually do not account for variations from the pre-selected choices poised by most EMR forms. This requirement usually results in a computer being placed in front of the physician, whose nose is often buried in the screen, rather than the eyes and ears being trained on patient or parent. Some patients report having no actual physical contact with the physician--i.e., a physical examination, even cursory.

The accusation of Munchausen by proxy [MBP] (i.e., false attribution of symptoms by a third party to a dependent [child]) is a serious LEGAL charge more often than medical diagnosis. If the "healthcare provider" takes a dislike to parent or other involved individual, the whole suggestion of this phenomenon is biased from the beginning. Often, refutation of the accusation of MBP, requires proving a negative. "You, Mr/Ms Parent are inventing this condition because I, the omniscient healthcare provider know everything. You who live 24/7 with young child, don't because you are an (uncaring, abusive, ignorant, malevolent dolt. So prove to me that the factitious illness you attribute to your child really exists." Guilty until proven innocent.

In the meanwhile, while the young dependent(s), allegedly victims of MBP, are taken away from the parents, unless and until the parent can gather enough medical evidence and/or legal assistance to restore the family unit. The residual trauma from such fired, unwarranted separation of child from parent may be lifelong.

The Funding Streams

Arizona stands out as especially bad when it comes to this sort of child snatching, but the funding streams that incentivize it are a national problem, said Connie Reguli, a Tennessee attorney noted for taking on Child Protective Services (CPS), in an interview with the Caller.

She said the problem started in 1974 with the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), a brainchild of Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter’s vice president.

CAPTA is primarily controlled with funds from Social Security Title IV (parts B and E). Social Security Title IV provides grants to states for aid to dependent children. Title IV E provides incentives to place and keep kids in foster homes, while Title IV B provides funds for family reunification.

Reguli said that the problem is that Title IV E incentives dwarf Title IV B, by about an order of magnitude, she said. This creates an incentive to snatch kids.

She said another problem is the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which provides extra financial incentives for kids in foster care to then be adopted out.

Follow the money. Money is king. Police have been incentivized to participate, even demand, such usurpation of family responsibility. Just like "civil forfeiture" used in suspected drug crimes or other offenses enrich law enforcement agencies, so does the CAPTA act.

A trend is quite evident here. The state takes upon itself the right to prejudge the actions of citizens on the basis of no more than hearsay, which much of the medical inferences often are: unsupported by fact.

Of course MBP does exist and often, due to medical unsophistication of such perpetrators, are easily discovered. When MBP is difficult to prove, the diagnosis MUST be supported by an independent and qualified second opinion. Such an opinion requires consultation with experts in medical specialties able to make such determinations--not a police sergeant or a nurse administrator, etc.

If this phenomenon were an isolated instance of the exertion of state power into our private lives, it would not be as disturbing as it seems were it not for the pseudo criminalization of rights of assembly, free expression, right to bear arms, freedom from warrantless each and seizure, warrantless inquisitions such as FISA.

Other instances of possibly unwarranted judicial intrusion involves vaccination. Many vaccines, notably the Salk Polio Vaccine have been a tremendous boon to the overall health of people world-wide. Other vaccinations, such as influenza vaccination, amount to nothing more than medical roulette, betting on 00 as to the next flu epidemic. The choice of vaccine components, even if the so-called inert ingredients are discounted, usually results in a bad guess. The correct infective strain is often not discovered until the epidemic is half over and the correct vaccine becomes available at the tail end of the influenzal lifecycle.

With a little more effort, other instances of medical failings leading to coercive judicial action, will be discovered. My purpose is not to provide a list of intrusive quasi-medical decisions given the force of law, but to advise of this most recent abusive practice of medical kidnapping.