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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..."
Do some research on the case. The hospital's opinion is at odds with a load of other independent medical experts with direct familiarity of the case. The state and the hospital overstepped their rightful authority in such an extreme example of overreach that it crosses well past the point of negligent misfeasance and frankly some people out to be in prison over it and the state and the hospital should be splitting the cost for real care for Justina for the rest of her life.
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.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I knew that BCH’s big donation day was coming up, and that most donors give online. I felt that to have sufficient influence to save Justina from grievous bodily harm and possible death, as well as dissuade BCH from continuing its well established pattern of such harmful “parentectomies,” I’d have to hit BCH where they appear to care the most, the pocket book and reputation. All other efforts to protect Justina weren’t succeeding and time was of the essence. Almost unbelievably, they kept their donation page on the same public network as the rest of their stuff. Rookie mistake. To take it down, I’d have to knock the whole hospital off the Internet.
I also knew from my career experience as a biotech professional that no patients should be harmed if Boston Children’s was knocked offline. There’s no such thing as an outage-proof network, so hospitals have to be able to function without the Internet. It’s required by federal law, and for accreditation. The only effects would be financial and on BCH’s reputation.",/i>
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
So which is it? Does she have mitochondrial_disease or does she have somatic symptom disorder?
And how did she end up at Boston Children's Hospital instead of at Tufts where they originally diagnosed mitochondrial disease?
And did the medical team at Tufts consult with the team at BCH at any point? Or did they just wash their hands of the situation?
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?
Inability to route prescriptions electronically to pharmacies
OMG! Don't tell me someone had to call it in!
Email downtime for departments where email supports critical processes
You're telling me this place actually bets peoples lives on EMAIL? Perhaps they should stay shut down!
Inability to access remotely hosted electronic health records
AND they have no procedure to deal with a network issue? No alternate networks? Not even via cellphone?
The workarounds are there. They mean bringing in extra people and cost money, but they are there.
The medical experts that sided with the family included the girls primary physician at Tufts Medical Center who knew her well and was treating her successfully, as well as many other MD experts in the same field who were unpaid and who reviewed and agreed with his diagnosis.
They were MDs, not homeopaths.
The state sided initially with the hospital and thus they are as criminally liable for her injury, deprivation of her meds for mitochondrial disease, 16 months of physical and psychological torture, as well as treating the parents like they had abused their daughter. She went in with the flu, but was otherwise functional, with videos just prior of her skating and hanging out with friends.
The quacks at the hospital locked her in a psych ward for 16 months. After 16 months without meds the hospital had nearly killed her, which is why they finally returned custody to the parents, because if she had died someone would have been facing manslaughter at least if not 2nd degree murder. When she was finally released she could not stand, sit or walk on her own and had other severe symptoms of the untreated mitochondrial disease. She has also had to have multiple surgeries to correct some of the damage.
Since your google is broken, here are some links. I know it sounds like Stalinist Russia, but this actually happened in the US a couple of years ago...
https://www.bostonglobe.com/me...
http://www.theblaze.com/storie...
If you have kids and didn't know about this story, you need to wake up and pay attention to the people and politicians who are trying to take away your rights as a citizen and as a parent. It is some scary shit.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Did you know she even existed yesterday?
Kidnapping is what the hospital did. Taking her from the hospital is rescuing a kidnap victim.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Did you know she even existed yesterday?
No, but his actions didn't bring me any closer to knowing the unbiased facts about her case. Knowing about her only means I know about yet another unresolved problem.
The only thing publicizing his statement did was ensure that lots of underinformed+unqualified people now hold a strong opinion on it. Depending on the facts, that could hurt her more than it helps her.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's pretty simple when you boil it down to its basic facts.
This isn't a complicated situation and we don't need Matlock to figure out what the fuck happened here. It's pretty plain and simple, actually.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
That was specifically banned though. They weren't allowed to speak about it.
Then how did Martin learn about it?
Something here does not ring true. The only information we have is from the parents and patient, because no one else is talking, due to the law suits. I refuse to draw any conclusions until we know the whole story.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
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.
Right, but knowing about her is an absolute prerequisite to any further digging you might (or might not) be inclined to do. There are a lot of people who now know about her. Some will actually get curious and dig deeper. Some of those will apply political pressure for reforms.
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.
I agree with you both
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Why talk to the collateral damage?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Do not attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
So leaving their child medically abused was better than breaking a bad court order? Sometimes you have to break the rules to do the right thing. The parents should have done that before the hacker did his thing.
Learn to love Alaska
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?
You only ever hear one side of almost any medical story, because patients (normally for good reasons) have a right to almost total confidentiality. Doctors can say practically nothing about individual cases without the express, written consent of the patient. Obviously this is not going to be given if there is a complaint against the doctor or hospital in question. The patients are at liberty to say anything at all about the case and nobody is able to correct them if they lie or misunderstand things. I've been a medical student and doctor since 1994 and can honestly say I have never seen anyone in the health care sector deliberately harm a patient or encroach on their autonomy without good reason, but obviously hospitals are staffed by fallible human beings and mistakes are made. Most patients are surprisingly understanding about mistakes if you are open and honest with them about what has happened and apologize.
The family went broke fighting this. You can donate here if you want to help: http://justiceforjustina.com/
I also read about the involvement of a Christian organization on the parents' side, which gave me pause.
Well then you're dumb.
The family are devout Catholics. The Catholic teaching on refusing necessary medical care is that it is tantamount to suicide, a sin that gets you sent to Hell.
While the girl was in the hospital, the hospital authorities were preventing her from going to Mass with the hospital's chaplain.
The family reached out to Christian groups because they didn't have enough money to sue to get their daughter back. And because it is in fact BS, the (perhaps right-wing) Christian groups agreed to help. And then, years later, because it was BS, the (perhaps left-wing) Huffington Post reports sympathetically on the hacker.
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.
This case occurred about 2 years ago. Their medical experts were not "alternative". In fact, their main physician was the department head of metabolic medicine at Tufts University. So far far from it.
Like "fibromyalgia", which many doctors felt was a non-existent disease. (Which has now been disproven as the cause of many fibro cases has been identified.) The doctor at Boston Children's Hospital did not believe "mitochondria" disease to be real. So he determined that it was all psycho-somatic, that her illness was just in her head. When Justina was brought to the hospital, the mother insisted that she needed a feeding tube. The doctors objected to this, used it in court to argue that the mother was pushing false illness and unnecessary treatments upon her daughter. Oh, they failed to mention that the very next day they had to give Justina a feeding tube.
This became a big toodoo... and the truth is, the state of Mass and Boston Children's Hospital uber fucked up. The issue was, that once they did, they committed fiercely to remaining in their position instead of admitting fault for fear of lawsuits. They essentially moved Justina to a psychological ward, ceased medical treatment, and her health condition plunged.
Also of note, this is NOT the first incident like this on the part of Boston Children's Hospital. They did a similar thing to another parent. The difference was she used to work for Child Protective Services. So they did not substantiate the charges. That parent in fact loss a child because of BCH's actions. A second child developed the same genetic mitochondria disease. And has since done significantly better after have been removed from BCH care and received treatment from the same far more knowledgeable expert at Tufts that was treating Justina.
In other words, BCH is hurting and even killing children by their actions. The sum of it being that egotistical doctors harming children because of their egos.
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.
Are you purposely ignoring the history of medical experimentation on human beings that has taken place around the world on people? Unit 731, Nazi Doctors at Auschwitz, CIA MKULTRA doctors being the most extreme and obvious cases.
Can anyone provide any evidence that this girl actually has a mitochondrial disorder? I take care of a lot of very complex mito kiddos, and the really sick ones are attached to drips 24 hours a day.
Well... there's the evidence that while being treated for it she was doing okay (could walk, skate, talk, etc.), but when that treatment was removed and denied, she deteriorated to the point that she was in a wheelchair and had trouble talking, then when treatment for mito resumed, she improved significantly.
So, there's that.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
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.
Egos, and it is quite common. More common than you would believe. And this is from nurses and doctors I know.
BCH refused to do so with another child. When after months of fighting and attempting to seize custody. They finally relented. Conducted the biopsy, which revealed....strong possibilities of mitochondrial disease.
So this isn't even BCH's first foray in killing kids because of egos.
Justina wasn't the first BCH did this too. Actions toward a prior one cost a mother the life of her child. This isn't to avenge, so much as to raises awareness and inhibit future transgressions against children and their families.
What this was, was a psychologist who interfered in medical treatment of a present diagnosis. Ceased medical case, while patient's condition rapidly deteriorated. And who's objection to parent for giving advice, in fact, said hospital had to within 24 hours do exactly what the parent had stated was necessary based on numerous prior medical experiences.
No, had this been my child. There would of been a lot of dead doctors....