CNN: Escape from the Mayo Clinic: Parents break teen out of world-famous hospital

Mayo neurosurgeons saved her life, but she and her parents were unhappy with the care she was receiving in the rehabilitation unit, and they say they repeatedly asked for her to be transferred.
But they say Mayo refused to let her transfer to another hospital, even after a lawyer wrote a letter asking Mayo to make the arrangements.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/13/health/mayo-clinic-escape-2-eprise/index.html

 

You just beat me to posting this. Pretty wild and probably essential reading for parents considering bringing children with ME to Mayo. If they can do this in a more clear-cut case...

 

I wonder if the Mayo Clinic is the same clinic Hillary Johnson originally writes about in 1989 but calls the "Dubois" clinic in her recently published piece called The Citadel: https://www.oslersweb.com/

"Only the names and locations have been changed...a world-renowned multi-specialty clinic in the U.S."

 

How much money was Mayo making from keeping this patient in the hospital against her will?

 

But why the ME patient? I just wonder if we need to dig deeper and find a commonality. Are this plp being used to test something, what makes them target?

 

This can't be true. What a sick world. I am shocked.

Aren't you allowed to leave hospital whenever you wish? Wouldn't this be illegal imprisonment otherwise?

But how shocking an incapacitation was prepared!

 

Could you explain? I don't understand.

I think here lies one of the answers. A second one might be this:

 

I tend to assume money underlies it, but that what really drives such ridiculous overreaching is medical folk developing certainty that they're right and, in this case, deciding only they know best and the parents should be shunted aside. I have difficulty imagining that money alone would drive such oblivious persistence at such a large institution, unless that particular hospital is in dire straits.

 

Some aspects of the medical profession seem obsessed with power, and to attract those who are. Nothing unique to the medical profession of course.

 

This is insane.
I do want to know why they did this, there has to be some reason they would go out of their way to torment a family and try to kidnap a patient. It could be as simple as a doctor who feels aggrieved but it merits a full investigation IMO

 

Sounds very similar to the child with mitochondrial disease a couple of years ago , who was effectively held. It was the American christian right who instigated her release.

 

I'm not familiar with that one but the christian right is not an ally you typically want.

 

Agreed - it was due to their focus on family rights and values.

 

Read the article and considered the commonalities with Karina Hansen case.

https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Karina_Hansen

 

With under 18 years old this might happen in Germany too. I know personally two persons with POTS/ME/? whose parents lost guardianship after they wanted to take/took their child out of the clinic because their children got worse through treatment. The ? stands for: at the present still not properly diagnosed.

 

Read the book, not the cover.

 

Yes, I know, but to my knowledge, in most cases this involves psychiatry, e.g. forced admission to a psychiatric unit and psychiatric diagnoses. This isn't better though. This just explains my being surprised, because I always had the conviction one can leave the hospital whenever one wishes. But I should know better...at least in Germany there are (newer) laws who make it possible to imprison you in hospital for forced treatment (e.g. forced cancer operation) - but always on the basis of a psychiatric diagnosis.

In this case, again, psychiatry was involved in the sense that the mother was called "mentally ill" (most probably for "provoking" a senior physicist) which formed the basis of trying to get a guardianship. This, at least, is a very classical example of what psychiatric diagnoses are and why psychiatric areas try to improve their popularity (with success).

 

Round about the time there was all that kerfuffle about Roy Meadows who's opinions got women imprisoned, people in the US said parents who seemed likely to sue a doctor or hospital for the way their child was being treated were increasingly being accused of Munchhausen's by proxy. All you needed to "diagnose" it was a parent who was "overly involved" in their child's care and who had a lot of medical knowledge. It didn't matter that the doctor was wrong a "good faith" diagnosis was a valid defence so using it deliberately had no comeback.

This was used as a threat because, at the time anyway, an accusation could not be removed from a parent's record no matter if it was false or malicious and it often lead to all children being removed from the family.

 

Yes, @Mithriel, I experienced that in my family.

 

This happens a lot on ME also, and some other brain disorders. Like what is common in this people where they get retained. Are they testing drugs on them, or do they have something unique?? Like we need to dig why they get retained, what makes them different.