Faulty hospital testing leads to newborns being taken from their moms
September 9, 2024 8:48 AM Subscribe
Susan Horton had been a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years, and now — pregnant with her fifth child — she felt a hard-won confidence in herself as a mother. Then she ate a salad from Costco. The Marshall Project reports on how faulty drug tests have lead to mothers losing custody of babies after their birth even though the moms had done nothing wrong.
After a California mother had a false positive for meth and PCP, authorities took her newborn, then dispatched two sheriff’s deputies to also remove her toddler from her custody, court records show. In New York, hospital administrators refused to retract a child welfare report based on a false positive result, and instead offered the mother counseling for her trauma, according to a recording of the conversation. And when a Pennsylvania woman tested positive for opioids after eating pasta salad, the hearing officer in her case yelled at her to “buck up, get a backbone, and stop crying,” court records show. It took three months to get her newborn back from foster care.
After a California mother had a false positive for meth and PCP, authorities took her newborn, then dispatched two sheriff’s deputies to also remove her toddler from her custody, court records show. In New York, hospital administrators refused to retract a child welfare report based on a false positive result, and instead offered the mother counseling for her trauma, according to a recording of the conversation. And when a Pennsylvania woman tested positive for opioids after eating pasta salad, the hearing officer in her case yelled at her to “buck up, get a backbone, and stop crying,” court records show. It took three months to get her newborn back from foster care.
By then, caseworkers and doctors had privately acknowledged that poppy seeds could have caused Horton’s positive test result. But in court the caseworker didn’t mention that. Instead, she argued that Horton’s purported drug use had “caused serious physical harm” to her child.
This sort of horrifying malpractice is a byproduct of ass-covering tribalism. The hospital and the caseworkers are only concerned about being right, or appearing to be right, and never admitting to being wrong, even if that is counter to the best interests of the child. It is fucked up.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:03 AM on September 9 [19 favorites]
This sort of horrifying malpractice is a byproduct of ass-covering tribalism. The hospital and the caseworkers are only concerned about being right, or appearing to be right, and never admitting to being wrong, even if that is counter to the best interests of the child. It is fucked up.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:03 AM on September 9 [19 favorites]
This is just absolutely how the state operates, how biopower operates. Unaccountable power in the name of health that extends the reach of the state, creates jobs in an expanding and violent bureaucracy, uses an "unassailable" logic ("do you WANT babies to be exposed to DRUGS") to justify aggressive overreach, treats people as herd animals to be managed. Like, if one herd animal is damaged or treated unfairly, who cares, after all it's the WHOLE HERD you're thinking of, so whatever.
Frankly, I bet that this type of thing plays into the development of conspiracy thinking around health and the state. It's clearly not the only factor or an initiating factor, but I wonder how many of these conspiracy-minded anti-public-health types have someone in their extended social circle who dealt with some kind of medical abuse like this and had no recourse.
I have a friend who, under different circumstances, was victimized by child protective services. It's too complicated to explain here, but only through an extremely expensive and complex process which involved intense mobilization by friends over months was she able to avoid having her child taken and placed in foster care. Months later, after tens of thousands of dollars of expense, trauma for all and every imaginable kind of crisis, the state just basically backed down and said, "whoops, I guess we could have resolved this all immediately, nothing wrong here, sorry, as you were".
People don't realize how bad these systems are until they're caught up in them, and especially they don't realize how there really are many malevolent actors in these systems. We encountered good and kind people enforcing bad and stupid policy, but we also encountered bad, selfish, malicious people who acted against us for no reason but cruelty.
posted by Frowner at 9:12 AM on September 9 [39 favorites]
Frankly, I bet that this type of thing plays into the development of conspiracy thinking around health and the state. It's clearly not the only factor or an initiating factor, but I wonder how many of these conspiracy-minded anti-public-health types have someone in their extended social circle who dealt with some kind of medical abuse like this and had no recourse.
I have a friend who, under different circumstances, was victimized by child protective services. It's too complicated to explain here, but only through an extremely expensive and complex process which involved intense mobilization by friends over months was she able to avoid having her child taken and placed in foster care. Months later, after tens of thousands of dollars of expense, trauma for all and every imaginable kind of crisis, the state just basically backed down and said, "whoops, I guess we could have resolved this all immediately, nothing wrong here, sorry, as you were".
People don't realize how bad these systems are until they're caught up in them, and especially they don't realize how there really are many malevolent actors in these systems. We encountered good and kind people enforcing bad and stupid policy, but we also encountered bad, selfish, malicious people who acted against us for no reason but cruelty.
posted by Frowner at 9:12 AM on September 9 [39 favorites]
I had several appointments where people asked me a bunch of prying, weird questions at the beginning of my first pregnancy. Happily I noticed pretty quick that the birthdate on my paperwork was ten years too young; at 27 I'd been funneled into the "teen mom, extra harassment" protocol by mistake. I got it corrected and the third-degree ceased.
posted by potrzebie at 9:15 AM on September 9 [29 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 9:15 AM on September 9 [29 favorites]
teen mom, extra harassment
Christ, what a bunch of assholes. Who needs support? Not a teenager going through a traumatic life-changing event.
Good thing there won’t be a ton of upcoming unwanted pregnancies forced to term.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:40 AM on September 9 [16 favorites]
Christ, what a bunch of assholes. Who needs support? Not a teenager going through a traumatic life-changing event.
Good thing there won’t be a ton of upcoming unwanted pregnancies forced to term.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:40 AM on September 9 [16 favorites]
The hospital and the caseworkers are only concerned about being right, or appearing to be right, and never admitting to being wrong, even if that is counter to the best interests of the child.
I'm sure there are such people. But most people who take jobs to care for children actually, you know, care about children, and are terrified not only about getting in trouble but about making a mistake that will put a baby in danger. For every horror story about a child being snatched from a good parent, there's another about a child who was left with an abuser. Certainly there are cases on both sides where clear errors are made and bad rules are followed mindlessly - and the drug screening seems to be a bad rule - but many of these cases are hard, except in hindsight.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:33 AM on September 9 [3 favorites]
I'm sure there are such people. But most people who take jobs to care for children actually, you know, care about children, and are terrified not only about getting in trouble but about making a mistake that will put a baby in danger. For every horror story about a child being snatched from a good parent, there's another about a child who was left with an abuser. Certainly there are cases on both sides where clear errors are made and bad rules are followed mindlessly - and the drug screening seems to be a bad rule - but many of these cases are hard, except in hindsight.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:33 AM on September 9 [3 favorites]
> For every horror story about a child being snatched from a good parent, there's another about a child who was left with an abuser.
If interventions are reaching the point where the false positives are as outrageous as described by the Marshall Project, then it’s probably time to remind care providers that their job is to statistically improve outcomes over time, not to try and prevent every bad outcome no matter the false positive cost to innocents. I just wish that was reflected in policies and laws.
posted by Callisto Prime at 10:41 AM on September 9
If interventions are reaching the point where the false positives are as outrageous as described by the Marshall Project, then it’s probably time to remind care providers that their job is to statistically improve outcomes over time, not to try and prevent every bad outcome no matter the false positive cost to innocents. I just wish that was reflected in policies and laws.
posted by Callisto Prime at 10:41 AM on September 9
I listened to this story on NPR this weekend from Reveal. I know we love the plain text format here on Metafilter (or maybe that's just me), but listening to these folks talk about what happened to them really resonated with me.
posted by zenon at 10:48 AM on September 9 [2 favorites]
posted by zenon at 10:48 AM on September 9 [2 favorites]
The thing is, taking a child from an innocent parent has little risk for the hospital/social worker. On the other hand, if a child dies, and they didn't do anything, they could get into all sorts of problems. Add the fact that social workers are almost always horribly overworked, and this sort of result is kinda to be expected.
posted by Spike Glee at 10:52 AM on September 9 [5 favorites]
posted by Spike Glee at 10:52 AM on September 9 [5 favorites]
The thing is, taking a child from an innocent parent has little risk for the hospital/social worker.
I'm not a social worker and happy to be corrected by social workers but this sounds like a big pile of bullshit.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:09 AM on September 9
I'm not a social worker and happy to be corrected by social workers but this sounds like a big pile of bullshit.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:09 AM on September 9
"… this sounds like a big pile of bullshit."
Which, the taking of the child or the small risk for the hospital/worker?
posted by bz at 11:12 AM on September 9
Which, the taking of the child or the small risk for the hospital/worker?
posted by bz at 11:12 AM on September 9
As for how these tests got the way they are, i’m reminded of a job I almost had right out of college with a political consulting firm. My would-be assignment was for a client manufacturing a medical test who were lobbying for their test to be included in the standard panel of screenings for state medicaid patients. Being an enthusiastic science major, I pulled up all the research papers about the test, which indicated high false-positive rates and noted the considerable extra cost to process the test results, and asked if they wanted me to do a cost-benefit analysis for the state about how to deal with the expense and false positives. They told me that was not the kind of thinking that got results, and maybe i wasn’t a good fit for their firm. I wound up getting a job at a pizza place.
posted by Jon_Evil at 11:13 AM on September 9 [19 favorites]
posted by Jon_Evil at 11:13 AM on September 9 [19 favorites]
That there's little risk for a social worker to take a child from a family.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:22 AM on September 9 [2 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:22 AM on September 9 [2 favorites]
We've been doing these stupid tests for nearly half a century and they STILL result in so many goddamned false positives. I was gonna post the obligatory link to the Mojo Nixon song but it seems a little too flippant given all the trauma these families have now.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 11:28 AM on September 9
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 11:28 AM on September 9
We've been doing these stupid tests for nearly half a century and they STILL result in so many goddamned false positives.
This is a policy problem, not a false positive problem*. They are CALLED screening because they are only meant as a first round of testing, to screen out the obviously negative from the only probably negative, so you don't have the expense and time of doing the full testing on every sample you collect. Doing only a screening and making a decision based on that is straight up malpractice.
*Except the poppy/opiate thing the article alludes to, which is a different kind of not a false positive problem, because it's a true positive problem. There's a simpler and known method to overcome that than testing for thebaine though, you can also just raise the testing threshold, because codeine is detectable in amounts that are not medically significant ... obviously, or we'd all be eating poppy seed bagels every time we got a cough. Not testing at the higher threshold is again straight up malpractice.
posted by solotoro at 11:51 AM on September 9 [15 favorites]
This is a policy problem, not a false positive problem*. They are CALLED screening because they are only meant as a first round of testing, to screen out the obviously negative from the only probably negative, so you don't have the expense and time of doing the full testing on every sample you collect. Doing only a screening and making a decision based on that is straight up malpractice.
*Except the poppy/opiate thing the article alludes to, which is a different kind of not a false positive problem, because it's a true positive problem. There's a simpler and known method to overcome that than testing for thebaine though, you can also just raise the testing threshold, because codeine is detectable in amounts that are not medically significant ... obviously, or we'd all be eating poppy seed bagels every time we got a cough. Not testing at the higher threshold is again straight up malpractice.
posted by solotoro at 11:51 AM on September 9 [15 favorites]
It's very different, but when I went to a state-required class for prospective adoptive parents, they included a section on the evils of homosexuality.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:36 PM on September 9 [3 favorites]
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:36 PM on September 9 [3 favorites]
I am never going to have children but, if were considering it, fear of this kind of thing would certainly count in the "reasons not to" category. It's ironic that when pundits and conservatives are beating the drum of "it's your patriotic duty to reproduce!" we seem to be doing everything we can to make pregnancy even more of a fraught ordeal than it already is. And that's not even counting the fact that no one beating that drum gives a fuck about what happens to the child after it's born and starts growing up
posted by treepour at 1:56 PM on September 9 [1 favorite]
posted by treepour at 1:56 PM on September 9 [1 favorite]
Shades of the Motherisk scandal in Canada, where a lab did flawed hair strand testing that "was inadequate and unreliable for use in child protection and criminal proceedings and that the Laboratory did not meet internationally recognized forensic standards."
Featuring the very likable Gideon Koren.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 2:35 PM on September 9 [4 favorites]
Featuring the very likable Gideon Koren.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 2:35 PM on September 9 [4 favorites]
t's ironic that when pundits and conservatives are beating the drum of "it's your patriotic duty to reproduce!" we seem to be doing everything we can to make pregnancy even more of a fraught ordeal than it already is.
the drum they’re really beating is “it’s women’s patriotic duty to be subservient to the state and jump through whatever hoops we can think of so they’ll be too tired and demoralized to organize”
posted by Jon_Evil at 3:21 PM on September 9 [6 favorites]
the drum they’re really beating is “it’s women’s patriotic duty to be subservient to the state and jump through whatever hoops we can think of so they’ll be too tired and demoralized to organize”
posted by Jon_Evil at 3:21 PM on September 9 [6 favorites]
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