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Merged Concerns over baby killer ignored? / Nurse Lucy Letby killed babies in her care

It is a pity that the Countess of Chester Hospital management steadfastly refused to investigate doctors' concerns for almost two years, isn't it?
Or the concerns of staff regarding skll and staffing levels, hygiene levels and equipment..... What about the the Care Quality Commission?
Read the Thirwall transcripts. The regulatory bodies called in by Tony Chambers found zero evidence of bacteria infections or pseudonemas.
Which has nothing to do with what I quoted.
Well they would say that, wouldn't they?
Yes.
I wouldn't know about you but many of the pro-Letby sympathisers are people who cannot grasp that not everybody is wired normally. Letby is perceived as a standard middle class girl who loves children and animals, living with her two cats, Smudge and Tigger and loves the family dog, Whisky. A model ambitious nurse working with little babies.

Yes, it is difficult for some to believe anyone could be so callously wicked and cruel. That is why they are sure she is innocent and are 'not convinced' of her guilt. This is why Letby got away with it for so long as her bosses refused to believe it either!

So PC Plod of Chester having at last been contacted by a former disgraced cop who was demoted to constable and a top mason to explain the suspicions: you can imagine the sheer level of scepticism met there! Yet the police spent two years thoroughly investigating this case.

Of course it's a miscarriage of justice and the police, and courts had no idea what they were doing!
What has this drivel to do with anything?
 
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Er, you do know the last murder took place in 2016? That is eight years ago! How much longer should they have spent building up a case?
Quelle Surprise, you're attempting to distract from the facts again.
The police involvement began in 2017, the (first) arrest was in 2018.
 
Dr Shoo Lee has just published a new paper (two weeks ago) which you can read here:

It's not new. It's an updated paper.
BTW Dr Lee has stated he is entirely sure that none of the deaths for which Letby is blamed were murders
 
Maybe, but I think it will nonetheless be interesting to hear the findings of the panel of experts.

I get that things like this often throw up a group of "experts" who disagree with official findings, but I think the methodology that they went through was interesting enough.
I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand I recognize that some of the tactics employed by the Innocenters are similar to stuff often seen in conspiracy theories (anomaly hunting, character assassination, maverick experts, etc...), but on the other hand, if some of the evidence used in the conviction is genuinely disputed by people who say their own work is being misrepresented then I'm happy to hear them out. I also think that some of the evidence is genuinely ambiguous and relies on a particular interpretation that could fall prey to confirmation bias.

Ultimately, I am surprised by how strongly many people are in their certainty about what is true in this case.
When one of the panel of experts is the doctor who lead-authored the paper upon which the prosecution depended for their "evidence", and he's come out and said that his papers do nothing to support the assertions of the prosecution "expert" (hopefully soon to be former) Dr. Dewi Evans, I think you have to take this panel seriously and, if you're interested in justice, annul the conviction.

But then again, the UK justice system is less interested in justice than in preventing Denning's "appalling vista" of seeing innocent people go free after conviction.
 
Or the concerns of staff regarding skll and staffing levels, hygiene levels and equipment..... What about the the Care Quality Commission?

The CQC are, unfortunately, a toothless paper tiger: my old trust would rig visits by the CQC so that known "trouble makers" like me, i.e. those who absolutely would raise issues around staffing levels and any other problems, were kept well away. FFS, I was pretty much barred from my base office for a couple of days during a CQC "inspection" and a bunch of more pliant folk were put up to talk to them with a couple of management minders present the whole time.

The system has been beyond a joke for a very long time.
 
The CQC are, unfortunately, a toothless paper tiger: my old trust would rig visits by the CQC so that known "trouble makers" like me, i.e. those who absolutely would raise issues around staffing levels and any other problems, were kept well away. FFS, I was pretty much barred from my base office for a couple of days during a CQC "inspection" and a bunch of more pliant folk were put up to talk to them with a couple of management minders present the whole time.

The system has been beyond a joke for a very long time.
Exactly. I had a similar experience when I worked for <REDACTED>.
They sent me out of the country when the CEO visited.....
 
The parallels with Lucia de Berk, including the absolute certainty of those supporting that conviction, are horrifying.

When first heard this case reported on the news, my first thought was, surely to God the lessons of the Lucia de Berk case have been learned and this one has a more solid foundation than a statistical witch-hunt. I've not heard anything that convinces me it wasn't exactly that.
 
When first heard this case reported on the news, my first thought was, surely to God the lessons of the Lucia de Berk case have been learned and this one has a more solid foundation than a statistical witch-hunt. I've not heard anything that convinces me it wasn't exactly that.
There's also weird diary entries, dubious medical "evidence", and deaths classed as natural being reclassified after the arrest. Striking parallels.
 
I haven't watched the press conference, but it looks like it has just finished and those interested can watch it here...



The spokesman says he hopes to give comfort and reassurance to the families of the dead children that the truth will come out. Good luck with that. My experiences with relatives of the Lockerbie victims, including a close neighbour and friend of mine who lost her grandmother on the ground at Lockerbie, convinces me that in most cases people are way too emotionally invested in the guilt of the convicted person to think calmly about it. It's understandable, and it's cruel to make them confront it. You just have to press on in the interests of justice and hope it all comes right in the end.
 
There's also weird diary entries, dubious medical "evidence", and deaths classed as natural being reclassified after the arrest. Striking parallels.

I'm not familiar with the details of the Lucia de Berk case, were these elements present in that case too?
 
I'm not familiar with the details of the Lucia de Berk case, were these elements present in that case too?
Yeah, all of them. It's rather weird. The wiki entry is reasonably accurate.

Colleagues started to notice that patients often died under de Berk's watch.
Amongst the other evidence used against her were diary entries that the prosecution asserted showed that she was "obsessed by death".
The very high digoxin levels in autopsy blood from one child were key to the argument.
....medical findings also failed to show any evidence of poisoning, such as the non-contraction of the heart.
 
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I originally thought the c-peptide results were a strong indicator of murder, but senior biochemists I respect have explained that this isn't necessarily so.
 
I haven't watched the press conference, but it looks like it has just finished and those interested can watch it here...


I just listened to the entire thing. It's now well past my bedtime.

I enjoyed it, which sounds ghoulish, but it was stimulating to hear people talk my language after I've been retired for six years and not professionally active. I'm a vet, not a human doctor, and I know little about neonatology, but I do understand what was being said, in the technical sense. I am a biochemist, and trained alonside human-type clinical biochemists. The external scrutineer for my PhD thesis was a consultant clinical biochemist at a London teaching hospital.

These experts were talking complete sense. In fact they articulated what was a half-formed suspicion in my mind that the entire thing had its basis in a failing hospital with multiple areas of incompetency, and that circumstances acted together to result in one person being elected scapegoat. Unconsciously, doctors coalesced round the premise that this particular nurse was murdering babies, rather than face the fact that their own lack of experience and competence was leading to a very high death rate.

What always puzzled me a bit was the variety of murder methods supposedly employed by Letby. Obviously it's not impossible, but Shipman is more typical of this type of crime, with a set modus operandi repeated again and again. Shipman didn't just like killing old ladies (in particular), he liked injecting them with heroin. It seemed to me that the prosecution were reaching to try to shoehorn in some sort of murder method around the circumstances of each of the deaths, a sort of God of the gaps if you see what I mean. Insulin infusions, misplaced feeding tubes, air injection, whatever they could allege plausibly that fitted in with the pathology, without any clear evidence that had actually happened. "That's just supposition", or conjecture, or whatever Prof Lee said on a number of occasions. Quite.

I didn't come to the thread to say any of that because it was all just the impression I was picking up. I hadn't made a detailed study of the case, and didn't intend to devote the time necessary to be able to debate it in detail. I'm glad I didn't bother, because it's all been done by people eminently more qualified and expert than I am. I am convinced, with and by these experts. These are not people riding a hobby-horse, they are people looking objectively at the facts in the interests of justice.

The later parts of the conference were the interesting part, to me. What can be done, in the light of the manifest intransigence of the CCRC and the appeal court to admitting arguments that could have been made at the original trial? As was said near the end, as the law stands, the procedure is simply to say, the defence were free to call these experts at the trial. They didn't. All the primary evidence this group had in front of them was available at the time of the trial. There is no new evidence and this sort of do-over is not allowed.

This has been a problem for numerous cases before this. It was a problem with my re-analysis of the Lockerbie suitcase evidence, and I probably should go off to that thread to discuss the issue in that context. The CCRC (and the SCCRC) see it as their duty to prevent cases going to the appeal court whenever possible. It can lead, and has led in the past, to people remaining in prison despite apparently conclusive evidence of innocence being uncovered. (I have read of cases where, although the evidence wasn't actually found until after the trial, the CCRC said, but it could have been found before the trial, so no dice.) I wonder if this will be the case that finally prompts some soul-searching on that one. Following on from the Malkinson debacle, it bloody well should.

ETA: There was also a comment about the prosecution expert having rushed immediately to the police station when called in and decided it was definitely murder before he'd finished his coffee, or something like that. I recognise that approach, and it is no basis for making any decisions in a case of this complexity. One problem is that the police tend to call in the experts who've got them the result they wanted last time, not the experts who tend to say, well, I don't think you have a case here. If I remember rightly in the case of Siôn Jenkins several experts expressed the opinion that the traces of blood on Siôn's jacket didn't prove that Billie-Jo had been alive when he was holding her, but they kept asking until they found a less-well-qualified doctor who would say what they wanted to hear.) This gung-ho view-halloo attitude should cause the cops to run a mile, but of course it doesn't.
 
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I just listened to the entire thing. It's now well past my bedtime.

I enjoyed it, which sounds ghoulish, but it was stimulating to hear people talk my language after I've been retired for six years and not professionally active. I'm a vet, not a human doctor, and I know little about neonatology, but I do understand what was being said, in the technical sense. I am a biochemist, and trained alonside human-type clinical biochemists. The external scrutineer for my PhD thesis was a consultant clinical biochemist at a London teaching hospital.

These experts were talking complete sense. In fact they articulated what was a half-formed suspicion in my mind that the entire thing had its basis in a failing hospital with multiple areas of incompetency, and that circumstances acted together to result in one person being elected scapegoat. Unconsciously, doctors coalesced round the premise that this particular nurse was murdering babies, rather than face the fact that their own lack of experience and competence was leading to a very high death rate.

What always puzzled me a bit was the variety of murder methods supposedly employed by Letby. Obviously it's not impossible, but Shipman is more typical of this type of crime, with a set modus operandi repeated again and again. Shipman didn't just like killing old ladies (in particular), he liked injecting them with heroin. It seemed to me that the prosecution were reaching to try to shoehorn in some sort of murder method around the circumstances of each of the deaths, a sort of God of the gaps if you see what I mean. Insulin infusions, misplaced feeding tubes, air injection, whatever they could allege plausibly that fitted in with the pathology, without any clear evidence that had actually happened. "That's just supposition", or conjecture, or whatever Prof Lee said on a number of occasions. Quite.

I didn't come to the thread to say any of that because it was all just the impression I was picking up. I hadn't made a detailed study of the case, and didn't intend to devote the time necessary to be able to debate it in detail. I'm glad I didn't bother, because it's all been done by people eminently more qualified and expert than I am. I am convinced, with and by these experts. These are not people riding a hobby-horse, they are people looking objectively at the facts in the interests of justice.

The later parts of the conference were the interesting part, to me. What can be done, in the light of the manifest intransigence of the CCRC and the appeal court to admitting arguments that could have been made at the original trial? As was said near the end, as the law stands, the procedure is simply to say, the defence were free to call these experts at the trial. They didn't. All the primary evidence this group had in front of them was available at the time of the trial. There is no new evidence and this sort of do-over is not allowed.

This has been a problem for numerous cases before this. It was a problem with my re-analysis of the Lockerbie suitcase evidence, and I probably should go off to that thread to discuss the issue in that context. The CCRC (and the SCCRC) see it as their duty to prevent cases going to the appeal court whenever possible. It can lead, and has led in the past, to people remaining in prison despite apparently conclusive evidence of innocence being uncovered. (I have read of cases where, although the evidence wasn't actually found until after the trial, the CCRC said, but it could have been found before the trial, so no dice.) I wonder if this will be the case that finally prompts some soul-searching on that one. Following on from the Malkinson debacle, it bloody well should.
Thank you for writing that.

I have not made up my mind on the case because I don't have anything like the requisite knowledge to assess any of the medical claims.

However, the fact that you find the panel to be persuasive, and indeed the fact that the panel is not, say, a bunch of notorious cranks, as far as I am aware, definitely shifts my assumption toward the idea that she may indeed be innocent.

I only really half-listened to part of this panel discussion because much of it was above my head. However, I do have a couple of questions:

1. Lee said at one point that the reason for the apnea alarm not going off (resulting in the accusation that Letby had switched it off), is because the baby in question was gasping for air, whereas the alarm would only go off if 20 seconds elapsed without the baby breathing at all. Can I just ask how he knew the baby was gasping for air? Is this established somewhere or is it supposition?

2. You mentioned that the "c-peptide results were a strong indicator of murder", but that "senior biochemists I respect have explained that this isn't necessarily so". Could you explain what Dr Lee said about this, or at least about the accusations that she had murdered with insulin?
 
Amazing when they have no access to the confidential medical records!

Let's sack the judiciary and replace it with Nadine Dorries and Peter Hitchens instead.

That's just embarrassing now. I've listened to them discussing the actual blood glucose measurements, number by number.

Indeed, according to the Times article....

Lee brought together 14 experts from six countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Germany and the UK.

“I wanted to have a panel that was highly distinguished, highly experienced, whose reputations and credibility were beyond reproach, so that they could say authoritatively what they thought was going on. So I contacted them, they said ‘yes,’” he said.

Each baby was “randomly” assigned to two experts to independently review the case. “The instructions have been very simple,” he said. “First, look at the medical records and decide what you feel is the cause of death or injury and what is the evidence for it. Second, look at the medical experts’ statements, see whether they are consistent with what you have said and whether you would change your opinion based on what they have said. And then third, issue an independent report, based on what you’ve seen.”

If their opinions differed, than a third expert was assigned to review the baby and consensus was then reached, but this has only happened with two of the 17 babies.

I thought the methodology was interesting.

Vixen, I can't pretend never to have done this myself, but throwing invective at everyone who disagrees with you doesn't strengthen your argument. No doubt we can all think of names to call Nadine Dorries and Peter Hitchens, and I am sure we would all find it amusing to smirk at David Davis speaking to an empty House of Commons, but notice that you are not smirking now that he is speaking at a press conference with Dr Lee. Instead, Dr Lee is no doubt maliciously dancing on the graves of babies. That can be the only reason for his behaviour, right? And David Spiegelhalter must be a "media whore" for attending the Thirlwell enquiry. His opinion must be assumed to be for his own gratification, right?

Besides, when we have tried to explain to you that there are actual credible experts who are not convinced of the guilt, you have resorted to legalistic arguments about how, even if true, they missed their chance, LOL! Again, that's a pretty crappy defence.
 
I have just finished listening to the whole 2 hours or so. It was a hard listen... a very hard listen, both from a technical viewpoint, and for some of the somewhat unsettling details they discussed.... I have to admit this has given me considerable pause!

I'm not going to post here again until I have had a chance to consider more thoroughly what was said, and to perhaps rewatch this video.
.
 
I just listened to the entire thing. It's now well past my bedtime.

I enjoyed it, which sounds ghoulish, but it was stimulating to hear people talk my language after I've been retired for six years and not professionally active. I'm a vet, not a human doctor, and I know little about neonatology, but I do understand what was being said, in the technical sense. I am a biochemist, and trained alonside human-type clinical biochemists. The external scrutineer for my PhD thesis was a consultant clinical biochemist at a London teaching hospital.

These experts were talking complete sense. In fact they articulated what was a half-formed suspicion in my mind that the entire thing had its basis in a failing hospital with multiple areas of incompetency, and that circumstances acted together to result in one person being elected scapegoat. Unconsciously, doctors coalesced round the premise that this particular nurse was murdering babies, rather than face the fact that their own lack of experience and competence was leading to a very high death rate.

What always puzzled me a bit was the variety of murder methods supposedly employed by Letby. Obviously it's not impossible, but Shipman is more typical of this type of crime, with a set modus operandi repeated again and again. Shipman didn't just like killing old ladies (in particular), he liked injecting them with heroin. It seemed to me that the prosecution were reaching to try to shoehorn in some sort of murder method around the circumstances of each of the deaths, a sort of God of the gaps if you see what I mean. Insulin infusions, misplaced feeding tubes, air injection, whatever they could allege plausibly that fitted in with the pathology, without any clear evidence that had actually happened. "That's just supposition", or conjecture, or whatever Prof Lee said on a number of occasions. Quite.

I didn't come to the thread to say any of that because it was all just the impression I was picking up. I hadn't made a detailed study of the case, and didn't intend to devote the time necessary to be able to debate it in detail. I'm glad I didn't bother, because it's all been done by people eminently more qualified and expert than I am. I am convinced, with and by these experts. These are not people riding a hobby-horse, they are people looking objectively at the facts in the interests of justice.

The later parts of the conference were the interesting part, to me. What can be done, in the light of the manifest intransigence of the CCRC and the appeal court to admitting arguments that could have been made at the original trial? As was said near the end, as the law stands, the procedure is simply to say, the defence were free to call these experts at the trial. They didn't. All the primary evidence this group had in front of them was available at the time of the trial. There is no new evidence and this sort of do-over is not allowed.

This has been a problem for numerous cases before this. It was a problem with my re-analysis of the Lockerbie suitcase evidence, and I probably should go off to that thread to discuss the issue in that context. The CCRC (and the SCCRC) see it as their duty to prevent cases going to the appeal court whenever possible. It can lead, and has led in the past, to people remaining in prison despite apparently conclusive evidence of innocence being uncovered. (I have read of cases where, although the evidence wasn't actually found until after the trial, the CCRC said, but it could have been found before the trial, so no dice.) I wonder if this will be the case that finally prompts some soul-searching on that one. Following on from the Malkinson debacle, it bloody well should.

ETA: There was also a comment about the prosecution expert having rushed immediately to the police station when called in and decided it was definitely murder before he'd finished his coffee, or something like that. I recognise that approach, and it is no basis for making any decisions in a case of this complexity. One problem is that the police tend to call in the experts who've got them the result they wanted last time, not the experts who tend to say, well, I don't think you have a case here. If I remember rightly in the case of Siôn Jenkins several experts expressed the opinion that the traces of blood on Siôn's jacket didn't prove that Billie-Jo had been alive when he was holding her, but they kept asking until they found a less-well-qualified doctor who would say what they wanted to hear.) This gung-ho view-halloo attitude should cause the cops to run a mile, but of course it doesn't.
I agree.

I am not convinced Letby is innocent, but I have suspected that some of the deaths she is accused of causing were natural. I think there was a mistaken desire that justice for the parents could be delivered by accusing her of all deaths she might have been responsible for and the volume of accusations in itself would be evidence of guilt.

I also believe that a massive investigation that took years and many investigators to produce the evidence of guilt is very difficult for a normal person to defend themselves against. The defence doesn't have the resources to check the accuracy of all the evidence the police have.
 
Thank you for writing that.

I have not made up my mind on the case because I don't have anything like the requisite knowledge to assess any of the medical claims.

However, the fact that you find the panel to be persuasive, and indeed the fact that the panel is not, say, a bunch of notorious cranks, as far as I am aware, definitely shifts my assumption toward the idea that she may indeed be innocent.

I only really half-listened to part of this panel discussion because much of it was above my head. However, I do have a couple of questions:

1. Lee said at one point that the reason for the apnea alarm not going off (resulting in the accusation that Letby had switched it off), is because the baby in question was gasping for air, whereas the alarm would only go off if 20 seconds elapsed without the baby breathing at all. Can I just ask how he knew the baby was gasping for air? Is this established somewhere or is it supposition?

2. You mentioned that the "c-peptide results were a strong indicator of murder", but that "senior biochemists I respect have explained that this isn't necessarily so". Could you explain what Dr Lee said about this, or at least about the accusations that she had murdered with insulin?

I would need to listen to it again to be able to give proper answers to that. Hopefully I'll find time to do that. I'm not sure how they knew about the baby gasping, but there was evidence about this from another nurse I think. It's very plausible. Twenty seconds is a long time to go without taking a breath. (When I won the "long note competition" at a recorder workshop I managed 22 seconds, with careful preparation including hyperventilation beforehand, and it seemed like forever.) If a moribund patient is taking only a shallow gasp every 15 seconds, say, it's perfectly likely they're not getting enough air to continue living.

The expert who disabused me of the notion that the c-peptide results were indicative of murder was Prof Vincent Marks, not anyone on that panel. He was a senior consultant whom I encountered in my time hanging around the fringes of the human biochemistry establishment, trying to incorporate some of their methods into veterinary medicine. I attended a number of presentations given by him and was impressed by his expertise. The short form is that neonatal glucose metabolism differs from that seen in adults and older children, and the absence of c-peptide in conjunction with high insulin concentrations is not abnormal in very young infants. I need to listen to that part again though because the explanation was quite detailed in the context of the actual allegations.
 
I would need to listen to it again to be able to give proper answers to that. Hopefully I'll find time to do that. I'm not sure how they knew about the baby gasping, but there was evidence about this from another nurse I think. It's very plausible. Twenty seconds is a long time to go without taking a breath. (When I won the "long note competition" at a recorder workshop I managed 22 seconds, with careful preparation including hyperventilation beforehand, and it seemed like forever.) If a moribund patient is taking only a shallow gasp every 15 seconds, say, it's perfectly likely they're not getting enough air to continue living.

The expert who disabused me of the notion that the c-peptide results were indicative of murder was Prof Vincent Marks, not anyone on that panel. He was a senior consultant whom I encountered in my time hanging around the fringes of the human biochemistry establishment, trying to incorporate some of their methods into veterinary medicine. I attended a number of presentations given by him and was impressed by his expertise. The short form is that neonatal glucose metabolism differs from that seen in adults and older children, and the absence of c-peptide in conjunction with high insulin concentrations is not abnormal in very young infants. I need to listen to that part again though because the explanation was quite detailed in the context of the actual allegations.
Thanks for that, because I remember hearing a number of claims that THAT was the most definitive proof of guilt.

However, if not then that's certainly interesting.
 
That's just embarrassing now. I've listened to them discussing the actual blood glucose measurements, number by number.
Yeah, I did point out to @Vixen that her statement was simply untrue, and previously quoted the relevant section, but this was ignored.

Case notes for each baby were examined by two experts independently, who then passed their reports to the chair. If their opinions differed, a third member of the panel reviewed the case and a consensus view was reached. The panel worked under the agreement that their findings would be released whether they favoured Letby or not.
 
Thanks for that, because I remember hearing a number of claims that THAT was the most definitive proof of guilt.

However, if not then that's certainly interesting.

Oh, I thought it was the one solid piece of evidence in a morass of "maybe she did this, or that, well she killed the baby somehow", which is what most of the rest of it seemed to amount to. Even there though, the circumstances as to how she was supposed to have administered the insulin (touched on in the press conference) were very peculiar and sounded highly unlikely. I had absolutely no idea that neonatal metabolism was different - let's face it, we don't put premature puppies and kittens and foals and lambs on to that sort of intensive care - and I'll need to read up on it. I need to listen to that part of the press conference again actually, because Prof Lee went into a lot of interesting detail but looking at the clock I wasn't going to rewind and re-listen at that time of night.
 
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I suspect this case will need a television series to poke the Establishment into actually doing anything.
Perhaps Netflix or one of the other 'new media' would be willing to accept the legal risks?
 
Indeed, according to the Times article....



I thought the methodology was interesting.

Vixen, I can't pretend never to have done this myself, but throwing invective at everyone who disagrees with you doesn't strengthen your argument. No doubt we can all think of names to call Nadine Dorries and Peter Hitchens, and I am sure we would all find it amusing to smirk at David Davis speaking to an empty House of Commons, but notice that you are not smirking now that he is speaking at a press conference with Dr Lee. Instead, Dr Lee is no doubt maliciously dancing on the graves of babies. That can be the only reason for his behaviour, right? And David Spiegelhalter must be a "media whore" for attending the Thirlwell enquiry. His opinion must be assumed to be for his own gratification, right?

Besides, when we have tried to explain to you that there are actual credible experts who are not convinced of the guilt, you have resorted to legalistic arguments about how, even if true, they missed their chance, LOL! Again, that's a pretty crappy defence.

Nadine Dorries is well-known to have poor thinking skills. Peter Hitchens makes a living out of being controversial, that is what tabloid newspaper columnists are paid for. It's pure entertainment. It's not invective to see right through them and take their paid-by-the-word chunterings for what they are. Littlejohn and Piers Moron are similar. Sometimes they hit the nail on the head (although Littlejohn alas, never) but that is only because 'opinion' is their art and they try to tap into public sentiment. I don't think it is throwing invective at them to be highly sceptical of their claimed outrage. Yes, I am afraid the covid-19 and vaccine deniers annoyed me because it was just ignorant and potentially dangerous ignorance at that.

Re Letby, a lot of it is pure sentimental anti-hero mush. I followed this case from the time of her first arrest, and also thoroughout the trial and th two appeals, plus Thirlwall, reading key transcripts. The trial was fair and a level playing field. All of the points McDonald (Letby's advocate, remember, so of course he is going to give her claimed innocence large; that is his trade speciality) were brought up at the trial and thoroughly cross-examined. The briefs gave detailed summings up. Justice Goss bent over backwards to ensure the trial was fair and equitable. Letby's defence expert witness, Dr Matthew (or is it Michael?) Hall is highly regarded and respected yet he was not called to give evidence. The reason? Because under oath and cross-examination he would have to concede Letby's possible culpability and it was too high a risk to put him in the witness box. Moritz and Coffey go over Dr Hall's theories in their book in a lot of detail. Unfortunately Dr. Hall's testimony would have revolved around the issue of injuries caused by the babies' resuscitation attempts (as does McDonald when he focuses on Dr Brearey's supposed damaging a baby's liver and the baby supposedly 'dying of shock', without addressing what led to the babies' sudden collapses in the first place. When a baby's cause of death is given as 'sudden and unexpected' it is because te pathologists are unable to ascertain a cause. Dr Manares explained this at the long and detailed trial.

So yes, Being objective, having actually followed the case, and looking reality in the eye, I am 100% sure Letby had a fair trial.

I do think it a shame that identification of the families involved is barred by court order because some of the parents do want to speak out. The danger in not identifying Letby's victims - with parents' consent, obviously - results in people assuming this is a victimless crime and that it is all about one person, Letby herself.

One chap went right off the rails, smashed up his home, was done for domestic abuse and dangerous drunken driving as a result of the loss of his two triplets.. Another child now about nine or ten needs 24/7 care for the rest of his or her life.
 
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I agree.

I am not convinced Letby is innocent, but I have suspected that some of the deaths she is accused of causing were natural. I think there was a mistaken desire that justice for the parents could be delivered by accusing her of all deaths she might have been responsible for and the volume of accusations in itself would be evidence of guilt.

I also believe that a massive investigation that took years and many investigators to produce the evidence of guilt is very difficult for a normal person to defend themselves against. The defence doesn't have the resources to check the accuracy of all the evidence the police have.

If we go right back to, is there any evidence that any crime was committed, what do you have on that score?
 
I have just finished listening to the whole 2 hours or so. It was a hard listen... a very hard listen, both from a technical viewpoint, and for some of the somewhat unsettling details they discussed.... I have to admit this has given me considerable pause!

I'm not going to post here again until I have had a chance to consider more thoroughly what was said, and to perhaps rewatch this video.
.
The 'Baby 11' analysis was remarkably scathing; they basically accused the consultant of being incompetent and guilty of (at least) misconduct, perhaps manslaughter.
 
Nadine Dorries is well-known to have poor thinking skills. Peter Hitchens makes a living out of being controversial, that is what tabloid newspaper columnists are paid for. It's pure entertainment. It's not invective to see right through them and take their paid-by-the-word chunterings for what they are. Littlejohn and Piers Moron are similar. Sometimes they hit the nail on the head (although Littlejohn alas, never) but that is only because 'opinion' is their art and they try to tap into public sentiment. I don't think it is throwing invective at them to be highly sceptical of their claimed outrage. Yes, I am afraid the covid-19 and vaccine deniers annoyed me because it was just ignorant and potentially dangerous ignorance at that.

Re Letby, a lot of it is pure sentimental anti-hero mush. I followed this case from the time of her first arrest, and also thoroughout the trial and th two appeals, plus Thirlwall, reading key transcripts. The trial was fair and a level playing field. All of the points McDonald (Letby's advocate, remember, so of course he is going to give her claimed innocence large; that is his trade speciality) were brought up at the trial and thoroughly cross-examined. The briefs gave detailed summings up. Justice Goss bent over backwards to ensure the trial was fair and equitable. Letby's defence expert witness, Dr Matthew (or is it Michael?) Hall is highly regarded and respected yet he was not called to give evidence. The reason? Because under oath and cross-examination he would have to concede Letby's possible culpability and it was too high a risk to put him in the witness box. Moritz and Coffey go over Dr Hall's theories in their book in a lot of detail. Unfortunately Dr. Hall's testimony would have revolved around the issue of injuries caused by the babies' resuscitation attempts (as does McDonald when he focuses on Dr Brearey's supposed damaging a baby's liver and the baby supposedly 'dying of shock', without addressing what led to the babies' sudden collapses in the first place. When a baby's cause of death is given as 'sudden and unexpected' it is because te pathologists are unable to ascertain a cause. Dr Manares explained this at the long and detailed trial.

So yes, Being objective, having actually followed the case, and looking reality in the eye, I am 100% sure Letby had a fair trial.

I do think it a shame that identification of the families involved is barred by court order because some of the parents do want to speak out. The danger in not identifying Letby's victims - with parents' consent, obviously - results in people assuming this is a victimless crime and that it is all about one person, Letby herself.

One chap went right off the rails, smashed up his home, was done for domestic abuse and dangerous drunken driving as a result of the loss of his two triplets.. Another child now about nine or ten needs 24/7 care for the rest of his or her life.
As usual for you this is utter, irrelevant, drivel.
You spout off about irrelevancies and fail to address the detailed excoriation of the evidence by fourteen physicians and scientists with hundreds of years of experience between them.
But you rant on about Dorries and Hitchens, neither of whom were involved in the analysis rather than address the facts.
 
If we go right back to, is there any evidence that any crime was committed, what do you have on that score?
I'm pretty sure there was as much evidence for gross negligence resulting in death charges against a couple of medical staff.
 
I read the article and it doesn't 'advocate' for herd immunity, it merely discusses it.


As an important and relevant statistician, Mr. Spiegelhalter was hauled before the Covid Inquiry, where he admitted under oath he had not taken the corona virus epidemic seriously enough. He has now inserted himself, together with statistician Dr. Richard Gill (PhD, not MD), into the Letby case. Whilst Dr Gill can at least claim to have an interest via Lucille Berk, Spiegelhalter is simply doing a Dorries and Hitchens. That is, he is a media whore. That is my reasonable opinion and I am terribly sorry if my opinion makes one or two people angry. The case has zero to do with statistics. Having learnt from the Sally Clarke case, the CPS wisely avoided the booby trap completely by not even mentioning 'statistics'.
 
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As usual for you this is utter, irrelevant, drivel.
You spout off about irrelevancies and fail to address the detailed excoriation of the evidence by fourteen physicians and scientists with hundreds of years of experience between them.
But you rant on about Dorries and Hitchens, neither of whom were involved in the analysis rather than address the facts.

Do read for comprehension instead of automatically flying off the handle. My response was to a poster who ASKED me why I used 'invective' against those hacks. In future, address your ire at the right person.
 
Do read for comprehension instead of automatically flying off the handle. My response was to a poster who ASKED me why I used 'invective' against those hacks. In future, address your ire at the right person.
:rolleyes:
A post that was mainly about the medical analysis, a matter you failed to address.
 
:rolleyes:
A post that was mainly about the medical analysis, a matter you failed to address.

The medical issues were addressed at trial. Letby had years to build her defence. She had four barristers and £1,500,000 of taxpayer money in Legal Aid.

Answer me this: if the defence is so strong, why did it not fly Dr Shoo Lee in from Canada and all of these other 'experts' to testify at the corrrect time and in the correct place.

The brutal objective reality is that Letby had no defence.
 
Someone advocating for herd immunity including on twitter during the start and height of the covid crisis is not a media whore? If that is my opinion, who are you to deign to control my view?
His job is to communicate understanding of statistics to the public. Doing his job does not make him a 'media whore'.

He was initially mistaken about the virulence of Covid19, but freely admits that, like a good scientist.

You are free to have your opinion; I'm also free to point out it's mistaken.

I'm surprised to find you employing ad hominem fallacies, rather than addressing what Spiegelhalter actually says.
 
As an important and relevant statistician, Mr. Spiegelhalter was hauled before the Covid Inquiry, where he admitted under oath he had not taken the corona virus epidemic seriously enough. He has now inserted himself, together with statistician Dr. Richard Gill (PhD, not MD), into the Letby case. Whilst Dr Gill can at least claim to have an interest via Lucille Berk, Spiegelhalter is simply doing a Dorries and Hitchens. That is, he is a media whore. That is my reasonable opinion and I am terribly sorry if my opinion makes one or two people angry. The case has zero to do with statistics. Having learnt from the Sally Clarke case, the CPS wisely avoided the booby trap completely by not even mentioning 'statistics'.
That isn't a reply to what I said.
 

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