While most Democrats are busy pretending nothing happened, the Republicans

[pnwmom]

are "studying" what happened to Justina Pelletier when the State of Massachusetts grabbed custody in February 2013 and put her in a locked psychiatric ward at Boston Children's for a year, for what turned out to be a physical disease. (The same physical disease she'd already been in treatment for at Tufts U. with a top metabolic specialist.)

http://www.westhartfordnews.com/articles/2014/07/17/news/doc53c7fbe14cce9028678138.txt?viewmode=fullstory

West Hartford resident Justina Pelletier, who was held in Massachusetts custody over a dispute about her medical diagnosis, talked about her ordeal at a closed meeting on Capitol Hill Wednesday, according to a report in The Washington Times.

According to the report, 70 members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC) listened to Justina speak about her experience as a ward of the State of Massachusetts.

No child and no family should have been put through what this family went through. Without consulting her real doctors at Tufts, without any significant "due process," the psychiatrists at B.C. decided that her diagnosis of "mitochondrial disease" was wrong. And when the parents wouldn't agree with the psychiatrists' new diagnosis of "somatic disorder" (it was all in her head), and sought to transfer her back to Tufts, the psychiatrists charged them with "medical child abuse" and got a judge to put her in state custody. The 14-15 year old was limited to one hour weekly visits with her family, and put in a locked ward for a year, before being moved to other facilities, still with limited visits -- for total of 16 months without her family.

The psychiatrists' diagnostic "hunch" turn out to be completely wrong, and that the state finally acknowledged this by returning her to the care of her parents and her original doctors.

Unfortunately, Justina's isn't the only case like this out there. Boston Children's alone has been involved in several similar cases over recent years. EVERYONE, not just Republicans, should be trying to figure out what went wrong and how we can stop unnecessary state takings of children.

Yes, there are many more children who benefit from the DCF system than suffer the harm Justina suffered. And the vast majority of social workers are well meaning and do the best they can. But when the system fails -- as it clearly did here -- then everyone should be working together to fix it.

It turns out that Federal and State law allow wards of the state to be involved in research -- even research with significant risk that doesn't directly benefit the subject. So Democratic House member Jim McDermott, a psychiatrist himself, is one of four bipartisan House members proposing a bill to end this loophole in the laws designed to protect human subjects in research.

Democrats in the House and the Senate should ALSO be studying Justina's case. It is wrong to leave this issue to the Republicans, as if they are the only ones who are concerned with the welfare of children and families and who believe due process should act as an important restraint on the power of the state.