Comments: Muzzling Academics, British Style
It's appalling that a doctor would be fired for linking to a document, but the reason I am commenting is that I am bothered by the whole sale dismissal of repressed memories you make. Yes, there were some cases in which people were wrongfully accused, but there were also cases and situations in which people's repressed memories were proven to be correct. If you read Jennifer Freyd's book you can read about the Brown professor who remembered abuse at a boys' choir camp many years after the fact and this abuse was proven to have happened to many boys at the time by the same camp counselor.
Like anything else that's new in America, we tend to go overboard and there is excess, but we don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water and imply that all repressed memories are false memories. Some folks appear to have true and proven repressed memories, some folks were conned into thinking they had them. Like anything else in mental health, there are good practioners and unethical practioners and good and bad results.
Posted by Alison Hymes at August 22, 2007 08:26 AM
re: MSP topic--years ago on the CABF bp kids org website a mother posted she was being accused of it for "wanting" her child to be sick with "mental illness" it was quite interesting,and the CABF forum board back then had a legal department that came in and posted they could help the mother. I wonder what happened in that case.
Posted by Stephany at August 22, 2007 10:06 AM
Well done for featuring this story. The GMC are obviously running scared of medical bloggers, and are only too willing to take up vexatious complaints against them.
Linking to a publicly available document is not a breach of confidentiality, and never could be, but it doesn't stop them trying. It's noting more than an attempt to silence dissenting voices, and cannot be permitted.
Rita Pal has done more to highlight problems in the NHS and the GMC than anyone, and is very well known for doing so - it's no wonder the GMC would want to take up such a patently ludicrous complaint.
Billy Seggars.
Posted by Billy Seggars at August 22, 2007 10:13 AM
Wow, Billy wrote an awesome post, well worth reading everyone.
Posted by Stephany at August 22, 2007 12:10 PM
Funny that you just posted on this subject. This is what can happen in the states -- right in my town -- in the psychology department at my alma mater.
Posted by Dr X at August 22, 2007 03:17 PM
I'm stunned at your off-hand dismissal, wholesale, of repressed memory. Yes, I too saw the wrongfully accused, the little kids led to tell vague lies, the media circuses. It's sad that those things happened, but it's distraction from what went on in the 1980s in the world of abuse survivors who were finally heard, and allowed to speak the truth even in public forums, even in courts of law. You wrong us.
Posted by Rose at August 23, 2007 08:14 PM
go to public inquiry corruption in ireland under"WATCHING THE WATCHERS"and"UNANSWERED QUESTIONS"thank you slan.
Posted by paul wells at October 2, 2007 12:34 PM