Iatrogenic Child Abuse
What is Iatrogenic Child Abuse?
The word iatrogenic is Greek. Iatros means physician and genein
means 'to produce' so iatrogenic means an effect produced by a
physician.
The American Heritage Medical Dictionary say it means:
'Induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy.'
(http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/iatrogenic)
So iatrogenic child abuse is when harm or death is caused to a child by inappropriate medical treatment or procedures advised and carried out by a medical personnel. This is not to say that all medical treatment is child abuse, certainly not.
If a child has a heart condition and a surgeon performs an operation to try and correct the heart, yet the child dies on the operating table, this is not iatrogenic child abuse unless it was proven to be due to the surgeon's incompetance.
Examples of iatrogenic child abuse are:
1. Vaccines - these are given to otherwise healthy children with nothing wrong with them so are not in fact, a medical treatment and are not indicated for the treatment of any illness, yet they have the chance of causing serious injury and even death in a small minority of children. The majority of doctors fail to inform parents of this possibility and many parents don't even know of the existance of manufacturer's data sheets, EMC Medicines or CDC vaccine information statements (VIS) so proper informed consent is not given in most cases. Lack of parental knowledge and informed consent puts the blame of iatrogenic child abuse on the individual doctor or nurse who administered the vaccine. See this video of a mother talking about the death of her son after MMR and how she was never told that children with febrile seizures should not recieve MMR and how she wasn't given any information on vaccine side-effects: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sI8A92hofg
In 1980, O.T.S Bajc wrote in a paper on pertussis vaccine:
'Since there is a significant difference between the incidence of spontaneous fits in children of the same age group and the incidence after DPT a causal relationship between the DPT and the seizures appears to be confirmed....the severe damages are particularly tragic as they are iatrogenic and in most cases affect primarily completely healthy children.'
(Convulsions after Pertussis Vaccination, Schweiz.Med.Wschr, 1980. 110, 1965-71, p.13).
VAERS lists 5061 events since 1990 where the patient died after a vaccine, 2978 of them were children under the age of 3 years. Please note that VAERS is a voluntary reporting system, most doctors don't report, most events are passed off as 'coincidence' or SIDS and the FDA estimate only 1% of actual cases are reported to VAERS.
(http://medalerts.org/).
The UK's 'yellow card' reporting system also noted 18 child deaths after vaccinations in a period of 4 years, but again, the system is voluntary and most reactions are not reported so this only represents a dip in the ocean.
The American Heritage Medical Dictionary say it means:
'Induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy.'
(http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/iatrogenic)
So iatrogenic child abuse is when harm or death is caused to a child by inappropriate medical treatment or procedures advised and carried out by a medical personnel. This is not to say that all medical treatment is child abuse, certainly not.
If a child has a heart condition and a surgeon performs an operation to try and correct the heart, yet the child dies on the operating table, this is not iatrogenic child abuse unless it was proven to be due to the surgeon's incompetance.
Examples of iatrogenic child abuse are:
1. Vaccines - these are given to otherwise healthy children with nothing wrong with them so are not in fact, a medical treatment and are not indicated for the treatment of any illness, yet they have the chance of causing serious injury and even death in a small minority of children. The majority of doctors fail to inform parents of this possibility and many parents don't even know of the existance of manufacturer's data sheets, EMC Medicines or CDC vaccine information statements (VIS) so proper informed consent is not given in most cases. Lack of parental knowledge and informed consent puts the blame of iatrogenic child abuse on the individual doctor or nurse who administered the vaccine. See this video of a mother talking about the death of her son after MMR and how she was never told that children with febrile seizures should not recieve MMR and how she wasn't given any information on vaccine side-effects: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sI8A92hofg
In 1980, O.T.S Bajc wrote in a paper on pertussis vaccine:
'Since there is a significant difference between the incidence of spontaneous fits in children of the same age group and the incidence after DPT a causal relationship between the DPT and the seizures appears to be confirmed....the severe damages are particularly tragic as they are iatrogenic and in most cases affect primarily completely healthy children.'
(Convulsions after Pertussis Vaccination, Schweiz.Med.Wschr, 1980. 110, 1965-71, p.13).
VAERS lists 5061 events since 1990 where the patient died after a vaccine, 2978 of them were children under the age of 3 years. Please note that VAERS is a voluntary reporting system, most doctors don't report, most events are passed off as 'coincidence' or SIDS and the FDA estimate only 1% of actual cases are reported to VAERS.
(http://medalerts.org/).
The UK's 'yellow card' reporting system also noted 18 child deaths after vaccinations in a period of 4 years, but again, the system is voluntary and most reactions are not reported so this only represents a dip in the ocean.
'The report, covering the period between 2001 and 2004, details how
one baby suffered a cot death following MMR vaccination in 2003. Two
more infants were reported to have died after having the MMR jab in
2001, but the cause of death in both cases was unknown.
After the death of a child who developed meningitis and swelling of
the brain three weeks after an MMR jab in 2004, a claim for compensation
was made by the child's parents. It is not known if this was
successful.
Six fatalities followed meningitis C vaccinations between 2001 and
2003. The deaths of seven other babies were linked to combined vaccines
against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough and reported to the
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). They include
a baby who died from a heart attack. Another died after a polio jab.Almost 800 other reports of suspected complications of childhood vaccination - including convulsions and hyptonia, in which the baby becomes floppy like a "rag doll" - were also made, including 160 for MMR.
Medics raised the alarm under the MHRA "yellow card" warning system, set up to monitor suspected adverse drug reactions. Although making such a report does not prove that vaccination caused death or injury, it means that doctors fear it may have played a part.'
Despite this the JCVI (who are a group of doctors who get paid by vaccine companies), found there was 'no significant safety issues with vaccination' (they don't call death a significant safety issue?).
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3336455/Secret-report-reveals-18-child-deaths-following-vaccinations.html).
2. Paracetamol/Cold Medicines - For years doctors advised parents to use cough and cold medicines on their children when they have an illness and pharmaceutical companies marketed and sold such drugs to parents for years, who trusted them as figures of authority. Now it turns out that there was never any evidence at all that they help children and they can harm and even kill them. The MHRA say:
'The new advice is that parents and carers should no longer use over-the-counter (OTC) cough and cold medicines in children under 6. There is no evidence that they work and can cause side effects, such as allergic reactions, effects on sleep or hallucinations.' (http://www.mhra.gov.uk/Safetyinformation/Safetywarningsalertsandrecalls/Safetywarningsandmessagesformedicines/CON038908).
One in four children are also being prescribed excessive amounts of paracetamol by their doctor, putting them at risk of liver damage (The Telegraph, 19th May 2011 - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/8522559/Over-confident-doctors-prescribing-paracetamol-to-children-too-readily.html).
Doctors also falsely advise the use of paracetamol after vaccination. For instance, the NHS say:
'Vaccinations shouldn’t hurt, although the area injected can be sore and red afterwards. Your child may develop a mild fever (a temperature greater than 37.5ºC) after the vaccination. If a fever develops, you can give your child infant paracetamol or ibuprofen to treat it.'
(http://www.nhs.uk/Planners/vaccinations/Pages/Appointmenttips.aspx).
This is advised even though medical science now links paracetamol use after vaccination to autism and it is known that if you give paracetamol to a child it lowers his immune system by reducing glutathione (immune cells) and thus makes the vaccines more ineffective because his body can't mount a response to them (The Autism journal wrote: ' This preliminary study found that acetaminophen use after measles-mumps-rubella vaccination was associated with autistic disorder.' - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18445737 and the Lancet wrote 'Although febrile reactions significantly decreased, prophylactic administration of antipyretic drugs at the time of vaccination should not be routinely recommended since antibody responses to several vaccine antigens were reduced' - http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2961208-3/abstract).
The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology wrote:
'In febrile children, treatment with repeated supratherapeutic doses of paracetamol is associated with reduced antioxidant status and erythrocyte glutathione concentrations. These significant changes may indicate an increased risk for hepatotoxicity and liver damage' - Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2003 March; 55(3): 234–240 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1884208/
Paracetamol use in babies up to six months of age (when they are giving a lot of vaccinations) is also associated with the development of asthma and allergies (for instance, in this study Acta Paediatr. 2011 Jan;100(1):90-6 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21143295). While a lot of parents think of asthma as a mild condition, it isn't. It can be lifelong and disabling, requiring medications for life and it even causes death. In 2009 in the UK there were 1,131 deaths due to asthma, 12 of them in children aged 14 or under. One person every 8 hours dies from asthma in the UK. Every 17 minutes a child is admitted to hospital because of asthma so to recommend something they know is causing harm is iatrogenic child abuse (statistics from Asthma UK - http://www.asthma.org.uk/news-centre/facts-for-journalists/).
Paracetamol use is also the number one cause of liver failure in both the UK and the USA (Acetaminophen-induced acute liver failure: Results of a United States multicenter, prospective study - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hep.20948/abstract;jsessionid=E0F0D0E56119644161AB244DB3D15312.d03t02 and http://www.bmj.com/content/322/7281/290?view=long&pmid=11157536).
Despite this, pharmaceutical companies advertise children's paracetamol products on television and in magazines and advise parents to give their children paracetamol after 'baby jabs'.
So the doctors and nurses create the child's fever and symptoms by giving a vaccination and the pharmaceutical companies then have a captive audience of feverish, symptomatic babies that they can profit from. Such advertising ought to be illegal but it isn't. They make your child sick so they can then sell you a product to make him better.
3. Other prescribed Medications and/or Untested Vaccines - Drugs which have NEVER BEEN TESTED in children can be prescribed for them by doctors. For instance, Cisapride (also called Propulsid), a drug used to treat gastric problems in children, was never tested in children under 16 years. The data sheet said:
'Safety and effectiveness in pediatric patients under the age of 16 years have not been established for any indication. Although causality has not been established, serious adverse events, including death, have been reported in infants and children treated with PROPULSID.'
(http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/archives/fdaDrugInfo.cfm?archiveid=6603).
The drug was suspended after five UK deaths and 60 heart complications as a result of the drug. Why it was ever used in the pediatric population when it had never been tested in children is anyone's guess. (UK licence for cisapride suspended, BMJ. 2000 July 29; 321(7256): 259 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1118265/).
The H1N1 'swine flu' vaccine was not tested fully before it was released to the public. Testing only began in July 2009, yet the vaccine was released to the UK public for mass vaccination including under 5 year olds in October 2009. The NHS said
'The trials may take some months to complete, and the vaccination programmes are likely to begin before the full results are available. However, there should be sufficient results by September or October to spot real safety concerns.' (http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/07July/Pages/SwineFluVaccineTest.aspx
No one can say after 3 months whether a drug is safe. Later, it was found that children could get the debilitating sleep disorder, narcolepsy, after one brand of H1N1 vaccine. WHO wrote:
'On 1 February 2011, the National Institute for Health and Welfare of Finland issued a preliminary statement following an investigation into the cases of narcolepsy in Finland1 . A systematic retrospective registry-based review was conducted of all new narcolepsy cases diagnosed during 2006-2010. Cases from 2009-2010, who were born in 1990 or later, were reviewed using newly developed Brighton collaboration criteria for the disease. During 2009-2010 they found that the risk of narcolepsy among people aged 4-19 years old who had received pandemic influenza vaccine was nine times higher than that among those who had not been vaccinated. This corresponds to a risk of about 1 case of narcolepsy per 12,000 vaccinated in this age group.'
(http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/topics/influenza/pandemic/h1n1_safety_assessing/narcolepsy_statement/en/index.html).
Six year old Josh is an example of a child who got narcolepsy only three weeks after the untested H1N1 vaccine despite being previously healthy, and eight year old Lucus, who has had to leave school because he sleeps up to 20 hours a day. His mother said
"I was never warned that there could be any connection between the swine flu vaccine and narcolepsy. “We have been told there is no cure for the illness and Lucas will have to live with it now for the rest of his life.
“He was a humorous little boy who used to make me laugh so much. He had a wicked sense of humour.
“All that’s gone and all that’s left is this angry frustrated little boy. It’s heartbreaking absolutely heartbreaking." (The Sun, 12th December 2011 - http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3994121/Did-flu-vaccine-give-my-boy-narcolepsy.html).
In Australia, a fast tracked swine flu vaccine caused previously healthy 11 month old Saba Button to become brain damaged, quadriplegic and epileptic. The vaccine also caused a massive spike in pediatric hospitalizations for seizures and was later banned for use in under 5 year olds. (Saba Button, the Girl who is Never Alone, Perth Now, 7th April 2011, http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/saba-button-the-girl-who-is-never-alone/story-e6frg13u-1226035296706 and http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/flu-vaccination-ban-goes-national-after-fever-convulsions-in-children-20100423-tglp.html).
4. Inappropriate Prescribing - Doctors also prescribe medications and give vaccines that are not meant for children. For instance, the banned flu vaccine mentioned above is still being given to under 5 year olds in Australia despite being banned in this age group and causing the death of one child and the brain damage of Saba Button.
Doctors are still injecting tots and this has led to one toddler being left critically ill in intensive care in April 2012.
Australian Medical Association WA President David Mountain said some doctors had “dropped the ball” after it was revealed that seven children under five had received Fluvax this year.
“I think some doctors who have given the vaccine (to under fives) have certainly dropped the ball,” Mr Mountain said. “For some reason they have not managed to get the message.
“There has clearly been a breakdown in communication or the standard procedures within general practices.
“It’s very clear on the inserts that comes with the product that it isn’t for children under five. There have been a lot of warnings and very clear instructions for the drug.” (WA Kids Given Banned Flu Shot, Perth Now, 21st April 2012 - http://www.optuszoo.com.au/news/top/perth-now/wa-kids-given-banned-flu-shot/648111).
Other drugs can also be mis-prescribed, such as eczema medications. For instance, when my son was 10 months old he was diagnosed with eczema (that he had had since 5 months and been mis-diagnosed). The doctor gave me a steroid cream for his eczema that said on the label it wasn't meant for children under 10 YEARS old and an anti-histamine medicine that wasn't meant for under one year olds. I was disgusted and didn't give him either. I used a lavender natural eczema cream and then removed cows milk from his diet and he recovered at 13 months and has never had eczema again (he is now 5 years old). What if another parent hadn't read the labels? Many just trust their doctor.
5. Experiments Involving Children - Children from poor countries, disabled children, children in foster care, etc, are often used for medical trials before the medicines are proven safe enough to be tried on humans. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences used 4,142 babies in tests on medicines, vaccines, instruments and new therapies. A total of 49 babies died and the health ministry set up an inquiry but the Institute said the babies died of natural illness and not their experiments. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/2590667/India-investigates-drug-trial-baby-deaths.html).
The single measles vaccine introduced in the UK in 1968 was tested in 1960 on children with Down Syndrome and Mental Retardation living in institutions. A health reporter for the Sunday Times wrote:
'BABIES and young children with Down's syndrome were
used as guinea pigs by British doctors in 1960 to test an experimental
vaccine for measles. The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that the children,
who were living in institutions for the "severely subnormal" were
subjected to the experiments because the doctors said it was "useful"
having them in hospital where they could watch over them for adverse
reactions.
One of the children died seven days after being
vaccinated from a common side-effect of measles, but the doctors
described it as coincidental in their report.
Llewellyn Smith, Labour MP for Blaenau Gwent, said
last night that he would press for an adjournment debate tomorrow. Mr
Smith, who has campaigned for two years on behalf of children damaged by
vaccines, said that to use mentally handicapped children as guinea pigs
was "to say the least scandalous. It is totally unacceptable in any
society which calls itself civilized. There must be an inquiry into how
this could have happened. I do not see how it could have been
justified." (Originally in the Sunday Times, 6th July 1997,
http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/vaccine_awareness/Downs_Babies_Vaccine_Subjects.html).
There have also been cases where children are involved in medical experimentation without the knowledge or consent of their parents. According to an article that was originally in the Staffordshire Sentinel, the infamous Staffordshire Hospital carried out tests on 122 sick and premature babies between the years of 1989 and 1993 to test different ventilation units. 43 babies died who had been subject to the trial ventilation units, compared to only 32 of another group of 122 who had recieved traditional ventilation. That's 11 deaths that could have been avoided. The point of contention is that the parents of the babies say that they were not aware their children were part of a trial and say the doctors forged their consent signatures. Stafford Hospital have always denied this. (http://www.msbp.com/staffordshire_sentinel.htm).
6. Birth Errors - Some complications of childbirth cannot be foreseen or avoided and these do not constitute iatrogenic child abuse. However, if there is midwife or OB incompetance or the mother's medical needs have been ignored, this can constitute doctor caused child abuse. For instance, 3 day old Alexandra died after a botched forceps delivery that caused severe spinal injury. Her parents had begged for a caesarean section repeatedly but their request was refused. They were never warned of the dangers of a forceps delivery. The Daily Mail wrote: '
Using forceps safely requires a high level of skill and expertise,
which ‘means that the outcome is always uncertain, even for experienced
surgeons,’ says leading U.S. surgeon Atul Gawande, head of the World
Health Organisation’s Safer Surgery initiative.There have also been cases where children are involved in medical experimentation without the knowledge or consent of their parents. According to an article that was originally in the Staffordshire Sentinel, the infamous Staffordshire Hospital carried out tests on 122 sick and premature babies between the years of 1989 and 1993 to test different ventilation units. 43 babies died who had been subject to the trial ventilation units, compared to only 32 of another group of 122 who had recieved traditional ventilation. That's 11 deaths that could have been avoided. The point of contention is that the parents of the babies say that they were not aware their children were part of a trial and say the doctors forged their consent signatures. Stafford Hospital have always denied this. (http://www.msbp.com/staffordshire_sentinel.htm).
6. Birth Errors - Some complications of childbirth cannot be foreseen or avoided and these do not constitute iatrogenic child abuse. However, if there is midwife or OB incompetance or the mother's medical needs have been ignored, this can constitute doctor caused child abuse. For instance, 3 day old Alexandra died after a botched forceps delivery that caused severe spinal injury. Her parents had begged for a caesarean section repeatedly but their request was refused. They were never warned of the dangers of a forceps delivery. The Daily Mail wrote: '
‘If you’re seeking the safest possible delivery of every baby, you have to take notice of the steady reports of terrible forceps injuries to babies and mothers, despite the training that clinicians have received,’ he says.
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1253013/Forceps-killed-baby-doctors-using-them.html).
Indeed, I (founder of VAN UK) had an episiotomy forced on me which gave a pain scale of 10/10 (never been in so much pain in my life - I now have no hip socket and a dislocated hip and bones that are chipping off and I had to be put on morphine. My pain before they put me on morphine was less than that of the episiotomy). It got infected and spread and nearly killed me. The doctor told me if I hadn't got antibiotics when I did, I could have died of sepsis. The scar still hurts after 16 years. I was not warned that the pain could be severe or about possible injuries to my child and I DID NOT CONSENT. My daughter was born with a cut face, but nothing compared to what Alexandra's poor parents went through.
In another case, a midwife plunged a six day old baby's foot into boiling water leaving her with burns so bad she may require skin grafts. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2002954/Stafford-Hospital-6-day-old-baby-left-horrific-burns-midwives-carlessness.html). Stafford Hospital, where the incident occured, is already under its fifth investigation because between 400 and 1,200 patients have died there due to 'neglect' and sub-standard care from medical staff. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/08/stafford-hospital-nhs-failings-inquiry). There has also been a police enquiry.
Other examples include congenital abnormalities caused to children by drugs given to their mothers in pregnancy (such as the thalidomide scandal). The H1N1 vaccine given in pregnancy also caused an increase in miscarriages and reported cases of late term fetal death, sometimes at full term. Some of the VAERS reports are listed here: http://www.progressiveconvergence.com/VAERS%20updates.pdf
7. Diagnosing Toddlers with 'Mental Disorders' - Pychiatrists are increasingly diagnosing children as young as 2 years old with conditions such as ADD and bi-polar depression (being up one minute and down the next). What 2 year old has any attention span at all? Most mothers will tell you their 2 year old is constantly on the go, never sits still, only concentrates for a couple of minutes before moving on to the next thing and they can turn on the waterworks at the drop of a hat and then laugh the next minute. Completely NORMAL behaviour for a toddler, that's why people dub it 'the terrible twos'. Now apparently being a toddler and having toddler tantrums means you can get diagnosed with ADD or bi-polar (manic) depression.
One such toddler was 2 year old Rebecca Riley who was put on Depacote, seroquel and clonidine for supposed 'bi-polar' and ADD. The little girl died at 4 years old after the drugs caused her lungs to fill with fluid. The International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry wrote:
'The medical examiner’s office determined Rebecca died from “intoxication due to the combined effects” of the drugs Clonidine, valproic acid (Depakote), Dextromethorphan, and Chlorpheniramine and that her heart and lungs were damaged due to prolonged abuse of these prescription drugs. Investigation into the cause of her death revealed she was taking 750 milligrams a day of Depakote, 200 milligrams a day of Seroquel, and .35 milligrams a day of Clonidine.' (http://isepp.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/2-5-million-settlement-in-wrongful-death-of-rebecca-riley-against-psychiatrist/).
Despite it being the psychiatrist who diagnosed these conditions in Rebecca and two of her siblings and being perfectly happy to give a 2 year old child, toxic and mind altering medications, it was Rebecca's parents who were tried and convicted of murder. (In my opinion, all were negligent and the healthcare provider should have been tried also).
However, the healthcare provider was given 'immunity':
'On February 9, 2010, Carolyn Riley was found guilty of second degree murder in the death of her daughter and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 15 years.
In a separate murder trial, Rebecca’s father, Michael Riley, was convicted of first degree murder and received the automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Kifuji, agreed to testify in the murder trials of Rebecca’s parents only after being granted immunity from prosecution.'
(http://isepp.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/2-5-million-settlement-in-wrongful-death-of-rebecca-riley-against-psychiatrist/).
To see part of the court hearing, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU5Er1f2LSs
The reason why Kifuji was granted immunity and got away with the death of a child is because of something called, 'the standard of care' - this means that in cases where something goes wrong, professionals ask what would have been done for the majority of patients? The fact is, the vast majority of psychiatrists would have prescribed anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, muscle relaxants etc because that is what they do. Since the 1960's and even earlier they have been working on developing more and more psychotropic drugs, getting paid hansome fees by drug companies and moving further away from their original purpose of helping patients with psychotherapy and counselling.
Because of this, Kifuji was not tried for murder also. The standard of care is not there to protect patients, it's there to protect doctors from prosecution.
Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry found that in America, a shocking 1.5% (a staggering one in 70) privately insured children between the ages of 2 and 5 were taking psychtropic medications. Columbia University professor of clinical psychiatry, Mark Olfson said:
"About 1.5 percent of all privately insured children between the ages of 2 and 5, or one in 70 children, received some sort of psychotropic drug -- whether an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, a stimulant or an antidepressant -- in 2007."
(Pediatric Bipolar Disorder: A Review of the Past 10 Years, http://www.jaacap.com/article/S0890-8567%2809%2962192-4/fulltext).
Genital Mutilation of Children - Some countries, such as USA, routinely cut off the foreskins of baby boys, supposedly to prevent infection and because it is supposed to prevent cervical cancer in women if their sexual partner is circumcised, however, there is little medical evidence for this. According to Net Doctor, this myth arose from a 1947 report that stated Jewish women rarely got cervical cancer so it must be down to the fact that their husband's were circumcised. However, this was only a theory and further studies over the last 50 years do not provide enough evidence to support this theory.
It has also been suggested as a preventative for HIV, although the British Journal of Urology say there is no evidence for this and the evidence is contradictory so it cannot be recommended as a preventative for HIV.
There was a myth that it can prevent penile cancer but in fact circumcised men are more at risk of penile warts compared with intact men so the risk of developing penile cancer is almost the same between the two groups.
It is credited with being 'cleaner', and although STI's that cause ulcers on the genitals, like herpes simplex, are more common in intact men, infections like gonnorrhoea that affect the urethra (the urine tube) are more common in circumcised men and circumcised men can more easily pass thrush infections to their partners.
(http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/menshealth/facts/circumcision.htm).
So there is little medical evidence that it is necessary to cut off part of a baby boy's penis and evidence that it causes harm and distress. If men are given the operation for a medical health reason later in life, they are given a general anaesthetic. If it is done to a baby or child, they are only given a local anaesthetic and sometimes nothing at all. Those who are old enough to describe it, say it is painful and video footage of babies being circumcised show them screaming in agony (I won't put a link on here, because I am the mother of a son and find it too upsetting so I'm not going to subject any readers here to that). It is totally unnecessary pain and suffering when they could be put to sleep for the procedure.
Male Health say that circumcisions cause severe complications in 1 in 50 patients and this includes bleeding excessively, infection, ulceration of the penis, psychological problems and sexual problems in adulthood. (http://www.malehealth.co.uk/circumcision/18888-circumcision-faqs).
Medical scientists recognise that circumcision then makes vitamin K supplementation of boys necessary because a circumcised boy is much more likely to have heavy bleeding, so parents opting for this, or those doing it for religious reasons should have a form of vitamin K, where by drops or injection, as the risks to the baby boy are too great. This of course creates extra revenue for manufacturers of artificial vitamin K (PubMed Health, Vitamin K deficiency bleeding; VKDB, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0004573/).
The Journal of Boyhood Studies found that the annual death rate from routine infant circumcision is 117, making circumcision responsible for 1.3% of all male neonatal deaths. The journal wrote:
'Baby boys can and do succumb as a result of having their foreskin removed. Circumcision-related mortality rates are not known with certainty; this study estimates the scale of this problem. This study finds that approximately 117 neonatal circumcision-related deaths (9.01/100,000) occur annually in the United States, about 1.3% of male neonatal deaths from all causes. Because infant circumcision is elective, all of these deaths are avoidable. This study also identifies reasons why accurate data on these deaths are not available, some of the obstacles to preventing these deaths, and some solutions to overcome them.'
(http://www.mensstudies.com/content/b64n267w47m333x0/?p=73874bae26624f9e8f865afcac183a01&pi=5).
Because the baby boys aren't actually ill and do not have a penile complaint that would require surgery, the evidence for its benefit as a preventative is so scant and the procedure is done without proper pain relief, that is what makes it iatrogenic child abuse.
Iatrogenic Deaths in all Persons, Child and Adult, in the USAThese are statistics taken from various studies and so are estimates:
Adverse Drug Reaction Deaths - 106,000 persons per year. (http://www.healtoronto.com/adrjama.html and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11144691).
Another more recent study found that adverse drug reactions were responsible for 6.2% of all first hospital admissions and 4.2% of re-admissions and that 44.3% of adverse drug reactions were preventable (Readmissions and adverse drug reactions in internal medicine: the economic impact, J Intern Med. 2004 Jun;255(6):653-63 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15147529).
Medical Errors - 98,000 persons per year - this number of people dying from medical mistakes every year means that more people die from medical mistakes, than from breast cancer, traffic accidents and AIDS. This was the top range figure (ranging anywhere from 44,000 to 98,000) written in an Institute of Medicine report entitled 'To Err is Human' - sorry, but not when you are in charge of human lives. (http://freecasereview.com/InjuryLawArticles/medicalerrors.htm).
Hospital Acquired Infections - 90,000 persons a year. By 1995 the rate of hospital acquired infections was 9.8% of patients, resulting in one death in a US hospital every 6 minutes. I am unaware whether this rate has now gone up or down. (http://www.scribd.com/doc/8427830/Nosocomial-Infection-ControlWhite-PaperGreg-Luther-BioWarn-LLC).
Outpatient Deaths Resulting from Sub-standard Care - 199,000 deaths per year. (Is US health really the best in the world?, JAMA. 2000 Jul 26;284(4):483-5 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10904513).
Unnecessary Surgery - 12,000 per year - ( Leape L.Unecessarsary surgery. Annu Rev Public Health. 1992;13:363-38). Leape wrote, in 'Unnecessary surgery, 1989, that:
'Allegations have been made that as many as 20% of operations are unnecessary. In 1984, surgeons performed 25.6 million surgeries, an increase of 5.6 million since 1975. If this is true, or even close to true, unwarrented surgery represents a problem of staggering magnitude in terms of needless pain, suffering and death.'
He continued
'Lewis (1969) found that the availability of surgeons to be an even more powerful predictor of utilization than bed supply....the number of physicians and surgeons alone accounted for nearly 50% of the variation (in numbers of surgery) observed.
In 1970, Bunker observed twice as many surgical procedures performed in the United States as in Great Britain and that the United States also had twice as many surgeons.
Overall, the weight of evidence indicates that if one area has more surgeons than another, its citizens will have more operations. This is to be expected, for an unemployed surgeon has strong incentives to stimulate referrals.' (Unnecessary Surgery, page 10, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1065571/?page=10).
Kifuji, agreed to testify in the murder trials of Rebecca’s parents only after being granted immunity from prosecution.'
(http://isepp.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/2-5-million-settlement-in-wrongful-death-of-rebecca-riley-against-psychiatrist/).
To see part of the court hearing, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU5Er1f2LSs
The reason why Kifuji was granted immunity and got away with the death of a child is because of something called, 'the standard of care' - this means that in cases where something goes wrong, professionals ask what would have been done for the majority of patients? The fact is, the vast majority of psychiatrists would have prescribed anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, muscle relaxants etc because that is what they do. Since the 1960's and even earlier they have been working on developing more and more psychotropic drugs, getting paid hansome fees by drug companies and moving further away from their original purpose of helping patients with psychotherapy and counselling.
Because of this, Kifuji was not tried for murder also. The standard of care is not there to protect patients, it's there to protect doctors from prosecution.
Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry found that in America, a shocking 1.5% (a staggering one in 70) privately insured children between the ages of 2 and 5 were taking psychtropic medications. Columbia University professor of clinical psychiatry, Mark Olfson said:
"About 1.5 percent of all privately insured children between the ages of 2 and 5, or one in 70 children, received some sort of psychotropic drug -- whether an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, a stimulant or an antidepressant -- in 2007."
(Pediatric Bipolar Disorder: A Review of the Past 10 Years, http://www.jaacap.com/article/S0890-8567%2809%2962192-4/fulltext).
Genital Mutilation of Children - Some countries, such as USA, routinely cut off the foreskins of baby boys, supposedly to prevent infection and because it is supposed to prevent cervical cancer in women if their sexual partner is circumcised, however, there is little medical evidence for this. According to Net Doctor, this myth arose from a 1947 report that stated Jewish women rarely got cervical cancer so it must be down to the fact that their husband's were circumcised. However, this was only a theory and further studies over the last 50 years do not provide enough evidence to support this theory.
It has also been suggested as a preventative for HIV, although the British Journal of Urology say there is no evidence for this and the evidence is contradictory so it cannot be recommended as a preventative for HIV.
There was a myth that it can prevent penile cancer but in fact circumcised men are more at risk of penile warts compared with intact men so the risk of developing penile cancer is almost the same between the two groups.
It is credited with being 'cleaner', and although STI's that cause ulcers on the genitals, like herpes simplex, are more common in intact men, infections like gonnorrhoea that affect the urethra (the urine tube) are more common in circumcised men and circumcised men can more easily pass thrush infections to their partners.
(http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/menshealth/facts/circumcision.htm).
So there is little medical evidence that it is necessary to cut off part of a baby boy's penis and evidence that it causes harm and distress. If men are given the operation for a medical health reason later in life, they are given a general anaesthetic. If it is done to a baby or child, they are only given a local anaesthetic and sometimes nothing at all. Those who are old enough to describe it, say it is painful and video footage of babies being circumcised show them screaming in agony (I won't put a link on here, because I am the mother of a son and find it too upsetting so I'm not going to subject any readers here to that). It is totally unnecessary pain and suffering when they could be put to sleep for the procedure.
Male Health say that circumcisions cause severe complications in 1 in 50 patients and this includes bleeding excessively, infection, ulceration of the penis, psychological problems and sexual problems in adulthood. (http://www.malehealth.co.uk/circumcision/18888-circumcision-faqs).
Medical scientists recognise that circumcision then makes vitamin K supplementation of boys necessary because a circumcised boy is much more likely to have heavy bleeding, so parents opting for this, or those doing it for religious reasons should have a form of vitamin K, where by drops or injection, as the risks to the baby boy are too great. This of course creates extra revenue for manufacturers of artificial vitamin K (PubMed Health, Vitamin K deficiency bleeding; VKDB, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0004573/).
The Journal of Boyhood Studies found that the annual death rate from routine infant circumcision is 117, making circumcision responsible for 1.3% of all male neonatal deaths. The journal wrote:
'Baby boys can and do succumb as a result of having their foreskin removed. Circumcision-related mortality rates are not known with certainty; this study estimates the scale of this problem. This study finds that approximately 117 neonatal circumcision-related deaths (9.01/100,000) occur annually in the United States, about 1.3% of male neonatal deaths from all causes. Because infant circumcision is elective, all of these deaths are avoidable. This study also identifies reasons why accurate data on these deaths are not available, some of the obstacles to preventing these deaths, and some solutions to overcome them.'
(http://www.mensstudies.com/content/b64n267w47m333x0/?p=73874bae26624f9e8f865afcac183a01&pi=5).
Because the baby boys aren't actually ill and do not have a penile complaint that would require surgery, the evidence for its benefit as a preventative is so scant and the procedure is done without proper pain relief, that is what makes it iatrogenic child abuse.
Iatrogenic Deaths in all Persons, Child and Adult, in the USAThese are statistics taken from various studies and so are estimates:
Adverse Drug Reaction Deaths - 106,000 persons per year. (http://www.healtoronto.com/adrjama.html and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11144691).
Another more recent study found that adverse drug reactions were responsible for 6.2% of all first hospital admissions and 4.2% of re-admissions and that 44.3% of adverse drug reactions were preventable (Readmissions and adverse drug reactions in internal medicine: the economic impact, J Intern Med. 2004 Jun;255(6):653-63 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15147529).
Medical Errors - 98,000 persons per year - this number of people dying from medical mistakes every year means that more people die from medical mistakes, than from breast cancer, traffic accidents and AIDS. This was the top range figure (ranging anywhere from 44,000 to 98,000) written in an Institute of Medicine report entitled 'To Err is Human' - sorry, but not when you are in charge of human lives. (http://freecasereview.com/InjuryLawArticles/medicalerrors.htm).
Hospital Acquired Infections - 90,000 persons a year. By 1995 the rate of hospital acquired infections was 9.8% of patients, resulting in one death in a US hospital every 6 minutes. I am unaware whether this rate has now gone up or down. (http://www.scribd.com/doc/8427830/Nosocomial-Infection-ControlWhite-PaperGreg-Luther-BioWarn-LLC).
Outpatient Deaths Resulting from Sub-standard Care - 199,000 deaths per year. (Is US health really the best in the world?, JAMA. 2000 Jul 26;284(4):483-5 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10904513).
Unnecessary Surgery - 12,000 per year - ( Leape L.Unecessarsary surgery. Annu Rev Public Health. 1992;13:363-38). Leape wrote, in 'Unnecessary surgery, 1989, that:
'Allegations have been made that as many as 20% of operations are unnecessary. In 1984, surgeons performed 25.6 million surgeries, an increase of 5.6 million since 1975. If this is true, or even close to true, unwarrented surgery represents a problem of staggering magnitude in terms of needless pain, suffering and death.'
He continued
'Lewis (1969) found that the availability of surgeons to be an even more powerful predictor of utilization than bed supply....the number of physicians and surgeons alone accounted for nearly 50% of the variation (in numbers of surgery) observed.
In 1970, Bunker observed twice as many surgical procedures performed in the United States as in Great Britain and that the United States also had twice as many surgeons.
Overall, the weight of evidence indicates that if one area has more surgeons than another, its citizens will have more operations. This is to be expected, for an unemployed surgeon has strong incentives to stimulate referrals.' (Unnecessary Surgery, page 10, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1065571/?page=10).
For caesarean section, the mother has a three times higher risk of death compared with vaginal birth (4 in 10,000 instead of 1 in 10,000 - see obstetric myths and reality page for citations) and the baby has a higher risk of neonatal death before discharge from hospital and of an impaired immune system.
The late Dr. Barbara Starfield of the John Hopkins School of Hygeine and Public Health said that the US health care system caused between 230,000 to 284,000 deaths per year - making medical deaths of a higher amount than those who died in the Vietnam war (60,000) and making it the third leading cause of death. I, however, think this is an under-estimation based on the figures from the studies I quoted as all of these figures would add up to 505,000 deaths per year, not including vaccine deaths for which scientific statistics are not kept, so I believe the medical system to be the number one cause of death. See Barbara's page (http://alternative-doctor.com/specials/Dr_%20Barbara_Starfield.htm).
SOURCE: http://www.vaccineriskawareness.com/Iatrogenic-Child-Abuse
