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Anonymous Hacker Explains His Attack On Boston Children's Hospital (huffingtonpost.com)
Okian Warrior writes: Martin Gottesfeld of Anonymous was arrested in connection with the Spring 2014 attacks on a number of healthcare and treatment facilities in the Boston area. The attacks were in response/defense of a patient there named Justina Pelletier. Gottesfeld now explains why he did what he did, in a statement provided to The Huffington Post. Here's an excerpt from his statement: [Why I Knocked Boston Children's Hospital Off The Internet] The answer is simpler than you might think: The defense of an innocent, learning disabled, 15-year-old girl. In the criminal complaint, she's called 'Patient A,' but to me, she has a name, Justina Pelletier. Boston Children's Hospital disagreed with her diagnosis. They said her symptoms were psychological. They made misleading statement on an affidavit, went to court, and had Justina's parents stripped of custody. They stopped her painkillers, leaving her in agony. They stopped her heart medication, leaving her tachycardic. They said she was a danger to herself, and locked her in a psych ward. They said her family was part of the problem, so they limited, monitored, and censored her contact with them..."
When you have to invoke a fallacious appeal to authority, you've already lost the argument. The fact that you're trying to make yourself sound like said authority only makes it worse.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That said, I don't think that justifies attacking the hospital electronically or physically; just through legal channels. But the hospital and courts were complete and utter pieces of shit in this case.
It's an interesting situation.
We've long bemoaned our inability to hold people accountable for their actions. Example after example of big, politically well-connected entities seem to get off scott free, and we the people are powerless to do anything about it, nor can we force the government to action.
(HSBC directors not being charged, Wells Fargo directors not being charged, Oracle paying $95 million in services restitution for wasting $240 million, and so on.)
Note that Justina's parents were issued a gag order that prevented them from talking about their problems, and it was only *after* her father broke the gag order that the situation received public attention.
Do we believe that the father should be prosecuted for breaking the gag order? He was justifiably concerned for his daughter's welfare. The hacker was also concerned, and wanted to send a message and perhaps prevent more abuse and tortures.
We all know very well that the democratic process is lost to us - as anyone who voted for Bernie Sanders found out.
How can we condemn the "last resort" actions of any individual trying to bring about just and proper changes?
Where do we draw the line?
Did you know she even existed yesterday?
And this is why we have clueless morons joining Anonymous, so that they can screw up a whole hospital without leaving their mother's basement. Sure he *thought* he was making a different, but he did not make any difference and he put other people in danger. Which is more fun than actually protesting, contributing funds for a lawsuit, writing an angry letter, and so forth. Sure, those actions might not cause any change, but neither did this action. No injustices were righted, no problems fixed, no angels earned their wings.
If he did care at all, he would have not done this anonymously and he would have announced what he did or claimed responsibility afterwords. Instead he waited until after he was arrested. He did it for the lulz, no other reason.
Anonymous exists to give their members an exuse to lash out. Just like Guy Fawkes their hero, they try to cause disruption but are inept at doing so and end up in history as a laughing stock.
You've heard of the placebo effect, right?
Then why didn't the psychiatric care work then?
Because doctors are heavenly beings and not human, as we all know. All it takes is one idiot on a moral crusade, confirmation bias among a group of doctors (very common), failure to admit mistakes (again very common) and finally recognising mistakes but covering them up. In fact, they're probably guilty of the same thing you are; failing to recognise they are themselves just as fallible.
OH LOOK! He DID! For obvious reasons, we didn't know it was him until after the arrest.
Power, for example. Or someone makes a decision and everyone else just supports it without chechking themselves, since, you know, the person that originally made the decision is a highly qualified professional.
A single person can do batshit crazy stuff, yes. But a group of professionals working in a hospital? Nope. Not going to happen.
It's called esprit de corps. You don't doubt your other fellow professionals, you doubt the stupid patient, since the latter didn't go to university with you and/or isn't in your fraternity.
But a group of professionals working in a hospital? Nope. Not going to happen. There may be some bending of rules, some I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you'll-scratch-mine situations, but a group of doctors intentionally trying to injure a child? That doesn't happen. Period.
I think I can answer this with a C. S. Lewis quote:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
It doesn't exactly describe this situation, but I think it fits.
Facts
- A qualified pediatrician at Tuft's was treating the child and managing her symptoms on an outpatient basis.
- The pediatrician referred the family to a gastroenterologist at BCH.
- For some reason that BCH has yet to outline in anything I've read, BCH defied the pediatrician and family's wishes, and instead of allowing the gastroenterologist to evaluate the child, they had a psychiatrist take on the case.
- The psychiatrist had a golden hammer, so he treated the problem like the nail he was familiar with and said that it's all in her head.
- The patient has been deteriorating under BCH's care.
- The patient is recovering now that she's been released from BCH and resumed treatment under the pediatrician's diagnosis.
Tell me which diagnosis is likely correct: the psyciatrist's or the pediatrician's? Which course of treatment was more successful?
This may shock you, but not all doctors believe in the Hippocratic Oath.
Think it over. What's more likely? Human pettiness and greed motivating BCH to take over care for the patient under the pretense that she only needs to be isolated from her family and given room and board so they can soak up medicare reimbursement to the tune of $1,000 per day (they invoiced twice as much)? Or the pediatrician being a quack?
If a doctor told you to jump off a cliff, would you? If a "doctor" (a psychiatrist) you didn't even ask to see said that your child needed to be shoved off a cliff for her own good, and if the psychiatrist's facility refused to let the original doctor defend his diagnosis, would you let him?
Do some research on the case
I have. And this is what I concluded: this is a case of zebras vs. horses. That fully explains the motives of the actors in this case.
Medical students are famously taught that when it comes to diagnosis, "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." In other words avoid making a diagnosis of a rare condition when a commonplace one will do.
There are obvious epistemological problems with this rule of thumb; one is that zebras do, in fact, exist, and in certain parts of the world are more common than horses. The second is that what is a "zebra" is dependent upon your clinical practice. For a clinical geneticist specializing in mitochondrial diseases Munchhausen-by-proxy is a zebra. For a doctor who specializes in detecting child abuse, a severe mitochondrial DNA mutation is a zebra.
Now consider a court that regularly deals with child abuse cases. Which specialist is the judge (who has his own epistemological biases) going to believe? The specialist in obscure genetic diseases, or the one who's been nailing abusers for years?
Dr. Newton, the Children's Hospital lead in this case, is admired by children's advocates in Massachusetts, and is described by some of them in one news story as "a highly respected physician who fearlessly speaks the truth as she sees it." And maybe that's the problem. Maybe playing the heroic role for too long is bad for your judgment, makes you see disagreement as unwillingness to listen.
What I am suggesting is that the error on the part of Children's Hospital here may have come out of the same mindset under which Anonymous operates, one suffused with the warm, affirming glow of self-righteousness. As I've grown older I have learned to recognize that feeling for what it is: a corrupting influence on judgment.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You guys are all a bunch of wakos. Seriously.
What could possibly motivate a hospital staff to open themselves up to negligence lawsuits just so that they could ... what? Torture a patient for jollies? Or something?
Before you draw conclusions that fit your tinfoil hat world view, please just spend even the tiniest moment trying to reason out why any group of people would behave in a way that defies logic, before concluding that this is what they must have done.
A single person can do batshit crazy stuff, yes. But a group of professionals working in a hospital? Nope. Not going to happen. There may be some bending of rules, some I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you'll-scratch-mine situations, but a group of doctors intentionally trying to injure a child? That doesn't happen. Period.
There has to be a liability issue here that we aren't seeing. Liability is the primary motivator of hospitals and medical professionals in the USA, that is to say avoidance of liability.
The hospital was likely worried that if they didn't do what they did they would be opened up for some lawsuit that their malpractice insurance wouldn't cover.
A lot of the crazy stuff that goes on in the USA is motivated by exactly this kind of thing. Like the diaper changing routine in daycare centers which involves sterilizing the table beforehand, washing the hands and putting rubber gloves on before starting, washing the hands and changing to a new pair of rubber gloves after removing the diaper, washing the hands after putting the new diaper on and sterilizing the table again. its more extreme than a CDC infectious disease lock down. Because liability.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.