Associate editor of the BMJ

[Guest guest]

Here’s an interesting tidbit which I came across at the UK Jabs Forum (in a posting from jennyr): How truly fascinating that Harvey Marcovitch is the associate editor of the British Medical Journal.Marcovitch, who was/is influential in the world of medicine and paediatrics, was vociferous in his support of paediatricians, including Meadow and Southall, following a spate of 'munchausen by proxy' wrongful convictions some years back. Sally , Trupi Patel and Cannings who were all wrongly convicted of this so-called 'syndrome' which was 'diagnosed'with enthusiasm by paediatricians including the infamous Meadow and Southall. This pair also enjoyed a lucrative sideline as expert witnesses in 'msbp' cases. Interestingly, this 'syndrome' seems to have been quietly dropped, along with its most ardent afficionados. Marcovitch's crocodile tears at the time over the poor suffering of his beleagered fellow paediatricians who were quite rightly being strongly criticised by those who had been wrongly convicted and their families, was in pretty poor taste given that the flawed evidence of those paediatricians had put innocent parents behind bars. The case of Sally was especially tragic.What was worse, though, is that the 'diagnosis' of 'muchausen by proxy' seemed to be quite a convenient catch-up for cases where babies or children had difficult to diagnose diseases or illnesses. There was also concern that the 'munchausen by proxy diagnosis' could be made as a cover-up for illness following medical intervention and/or drug error.For instance, in the case of Sally , the babies had died not long after the administration of vaccines. In the case of her surviving child, in the light of the previous deaths, her GP had elected to delay vaccines and the child was fine.The timing of the Sally cases was interesting - the MMR vaccine was being heavily promoted, the health department had only just recovered from a previous diphtheria vaccine scare and 'public confidence' in vaccines was considered to be a top priority. And now we have Marcovitch popping up in something of a journalistic capacity on the BMJ! What is more, we have Deer STILL writing at length about Wakefield's study in the BMJ, edited by Marcovitch. A cosy little arrangement! http://www.jabs.org.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5540