I have just been working my way through John Scott’s weekly compendiums of research reports for November and December (sadly, we are nowhere near as prompt at getting them onto the sites as he is at sending them to us) and I came across two really horrendous stories that he had sent me at the end of November.
The first was a report in the US Daily News about a severely dairy-allergic young man who died in prison as a result of eating oatmeal that was contaminated with dairy products. You can read the full report here – and watch the video here……
Essentially, in July 2012, this young man, Michael Saffioti, turned himself in at the Snohomish County Jail on relatively insignificant drugs charges. He had a history of drug abuse and had already been in this goal so they had his full medical records which included details of his allergy.
At breakfast time, even though he questioned it, he was given a standard breakfast tray which included porridge. The porridge had, as he found out to his cost, been contaminated with milk. But far worse was to come – you can see it all on the video.
As soon as he started to feel unwell he asked for a nurse, but instead of calling for help, the guards sent him to his cell ignoring his pleas. By the time they finally decided to check up on him, he was already unconscious and subsequent attempts to revive him failed.
His mother is now suing the county for $10 million in damages. Let us hope that she gets it – and in storm of publicity too.
The second horror story involves the relatively new therapy of faecal microbiota (or poo) transplants which is proving extremely successful in the treatment of a number of recalcitrant digestive conditions, especially infections by Clostridium Difficile. (You can read all about FMT on the FoodsMatter site here.) John saw this story posted on the pages of the Fecal Microbiota Transplant Facebook group. He told me:
I’ve just heard a very disturbing story of a US woman who did a home FMT (Fecal Microbiota Transplant) with her child (her father donated his healthy poo to the child to help improve the health of child’s intestinal bacteria) and has had the girl removed by the child protection authorities as a result!
The child had participated in the Human Microbiome Project and the results revealed that her stomach contained 80% pathogenic, colitis-causing bacteria, yet her GI would only prescribe probiotics, despite years of unrelenting pain. The child’s father was the FMT donor and was tested by a doctor before the procedure, and the child’s condition improved significantly as a result of it.
But, unfortunately, the child’s GI found out, decided the parents were ‘practicing medicine illegally’ and reported them, with the result that the child protection services removed the girl from the home for four days. When she was returned, it was with a variety of stipulations regarding her medical care! (We assume that these did not include further FM transplants…)
I guess these stories illustrate – yet again – the way power can subvert the rights of the individual. Prison officers have almost godlike control over the miscreants they house and child protection officers can have similar powers over children whose parents do not follow medical convention. The problem is that – confronted with the overarching power of ‘authority’ – the individual often has nowhere to go. This does not reflect well on the democracy we claim to cherish.
Both awful horrible stories Michelle. I hope that prisons in the UK would be better equipped to handle allergies but I dread to think what that would be like, it’s not like a restaurant where you can ask for something plain and simple and speak to the chef but surely there should be some basic rights to care in these cases? And imagine you you upset the wrong person, armed with this imformation about your allergy life could be very dangerous in prison.
And the case with the child is just outrageous. Again it’s in the US. Let’s hope this kind of thing doesn’t start happening here in the UK. Simple common sense shows the child’s health improved yet she is still refused the treatment – what are the parents supposed to do?
The problem, I guess, in a prison is that you really do not have much in the way of rights so if you get an ignorant/bloody minded guard or warder, even if he/she is meant to pay attention to you, there is very little that you can do – except, I suppose in this case, refuse to eat the food….
I wish that you were right about the child being removed from its parents only being something that would happen in the US. I don’t know of any other stories with reference to FMT in the UK but there are certainly a number of cases where parents of vaccine damaged children have had them taken away or have been accused, when death has occurred, of having killed them – you will remember that several years ago there were several cases of of mothers on trial for killing their babies, often accused of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, when they were entirely innocent. Chekc out the VacTruth site for more….