Motherisk: (Aftermath 4A): Toronto Star says the disaster could have been averted from the outset, "if it had applied lessons around forensic training and oversight from a 2008 inquiry into the actions of the hospital’s former disgraced pathologist, Dr. Charles Smith" - and that "In the end, it isn’t just leadership at the Motherisk lab that is on “trial.” It is the people who run one of the country’s most prestigious hospitals." (Must, Must Read. HL);

EDITORIAL: "Sick Kids hospital needs to look in the mirror,"  published by the Globe and Mail on December 21, 2015.

"In the end, it isn’t just leadership at the Motherisk lab that is on “trial.” It is the people who run one of the country’s most prestigious hospitals. As the next inquiry into Motherisk gets underway, the hospital should be conducting its own review of how this debacle unfolded." Toronto Star;


SUB-HEADING: "Now that a report has found the Motherisk hair testing program to be ‘inadequate and unreliable,’ the Hospital for Sick Children should examine its own procedures and leadership."


PHOTO CAPTION: "Retired judge Susan Lang presents scathing report of the Hospital for Sick Children’s Motherisk hair testing program Thursday at Queen's Park."

GIST:  "For more than a year, as the reliability of the Hospital for Sick Children’s Motherisk drug and alcohol hair-testing program was under attack by experts, parents who had lost custody of their children or were convicted of crimes as a result of the lab’s results have been in agonizing limbo. Thankfully, their wait is almost over. A powerful report made public last week by retired judge Susan Lang found the testing program at the Motherisk lab was “inadequate and unreliable.” As a result, the Ontario government is launching an immediate review of all child custody and criminal cases that may have been adversely affected by false results from the lab. The probe is both overdue and very welcome. In the last 10 years hair samples from more than 16,000 people were requested by child protection agencies and the review found six criminal cases that led to convictions where hair tests from the lab were used. No one knows how many parents may have lost custody of their children or how many may have been convicted of a crime based on faulty lab results. Still, it didn’t have to take so long to resolve — or indeed occur in the first place. First, Sick Kids could itself have reviewed procedures at the lab when questions were first raised about the accuracy of Motherisk hair strand testing during an October 2014 court case, which overturned evidence from the lab based on expert testimony that its results were unreliable. Instead, in the face of an investigative series of articles by the Star’s Rachel Mendleson, the hospital went on the defence. Then, when it did conduct a “review” it got it wrong. In November of last year, CEO Dr. Michael Apkon and pediatrician-in-chief Dr. Denis Daneman announced that an internal probe of Motherisk’s processes “has reaffirmed that the public can have full confidence in the reliability of Motherisk’s hair testing.”.........There’s more the hospital could have done to prevent this disaster. As Lang found, the hospital could have headed it off in the first place if it had applied lessons around forensic training and oversight from a 2008 inquiry into the actions of the hospital’s former disgraced pathologist, Dr. Charles Smith. Smith, who served as head pediatric forensic pathologist at the hospital, made errors in hundreds of autopsies before 2001 that resulted in false convictions of several people for killing small children. In the end, it isn’t just leadership at the Motherisk lab that is on “trial.” It is the people who run one of the country’s most prestigious hospitals. As the next inquiry into Motherisk gets underway, the hospital should be conducting its own review of how this debacle unfolded."