(Pssst... it's Munchausen, actually.)
Just because some people were wrongly convicted of smothering their babies, doesn't mean nobody has ever smothered a baby, or that everyone in prison for smothering a baby is innocent.
This has led on to the Munchausen-by-proxy area because it was the same person whose over-confident (and wrong) evidence led to the erroneous convictions for baby smothering, who invented the condition of Munchausen-by-proxy.
It's supposed to be a psychiatric disorder where an attention-seeking adult deliberately harms an infant or other helples dependant in order to revel in the fuss and attention that will result when the victim's (apparently natural) medical condition comes to light.
It does seem odd to me that this condition was described and named, not by a psychiatrist, but by a paediatrician. And I'm seeing plausible evidence to suggest that it may have been seriously over-diagnosed. Some people are talking about a scandal of the same order as the Cleveland child abuse affair just waiting to come out, this time involving innocent parents wrongly accused of deliberately harming their children for psychological reasons.
But just because there may be some people who have been wrongly suspected and convicted of deliberately harming their children doesn't mean that everyone who has been convicted of harming a child is innocent.
It appears that the text-book case of MbP, Beverley Allitt, may be going to appeal on the strength of this story. However, I've heard some details about the evidence against her from pretty close to the horse's mouth, and I really don't see what grounds she has for appeal. Somebody gave these babies huge doses of insulin, and the evidence pointed to that somebody being her. And her motive appeared to be that she liked being at the centre of the big resuscitation fuss, and all that came after it.
Just, do you label this a psychiatric illness, or just plain badness?
So far as the anti-vax lot are concerned, I'm not sure how they are trying to play it. If MbP exists, they won't get too far saying sure, I shook my baby, but it was all to fuel a deep need I had to be the centre of attention. Beverley Allitt may be diagnosed MbP, but she's still in jail. If it doesn't exist, so what? People still harm their children, for all sorts of reasons.
Geni is right, you have to look at each case on its facts. Is there genuine evidence that the parent or carer harmed the child? If so, why? MbP is just another motive, given a fancy psychiatric label. Roy Meadow is now being recognised as someone who was far to ready to assume that parents harm their children on a regular basis, and who put a number of innocent people behind bars (and separated others from their children) on flimsy to non-existent evidence.
But that doesn't mean that nobody has ever harmed a child. Think Victoria Climbié. And it certainly doesn't provide any random child-abuser with a get out of jail free card.
Rolfe.
