Thought Picnic: Tragedy has no favouritism

All in a day of our humanity

The past 24 hours have been filled with rather unfortunate circumstances that, as observers reflecting on the truly life-changing issues, we need to be mindful of the opinions we hold and express, so we do not fall into the irony of becoming victims of our own views. More pertinently, we must also be mindful of the company we keep.

In both cases, the unfortunate and the unintentional have come to the forefront, with consequences including loss of life and loss of position, status, and prestige. We must wonder how parts of our past can have the power to haunt us into the present, shaping our future.

We are limited by our humanity

While we, as humans, can have anticipation or foreboding, we sometimes lack the foresight to consider the consequences of our current relationships. Yet, we can be judged harshly when situations and circumstances obscure any indication or premonition of worse outcomes.

Then again, what would be the thrill of living if we knew everything beforehand? Insight, ideas, and inspiration are useful, as some guiding principles can distinguish the wise from the foolish. Accepting our past foolishness and follies while seeking to learn from them, through personal experience and reflection on others' stories, is an important part of education in life.

What we exploit can also exploit us

What I cannot shake from my mind is how some have capitalised on resentment or exploited the basest instincts of human nature to gain advantage, often at our expense. We find ourselves acting against our better interests, persuaded by lies or obfuscations that have become the accepted truth.

The standard of conversation is now measured by groupthink, with risks of ostracism; everything is polarised, leaving no middle ground or room for disagreement without becoming disagreeable. Entrenchment is preferred over engagement; everyone is talking, but few are listening, unless they are only hearing what they want to hear. Confirmation bias is trending, rather than the challenging of assumptions.

The cost of such polarisation and the othering of differing viewpoints is often dismissed as irrelevant, inconsequential, or even evil. Victims are often not the purveyors of doom themselves but those who perpetuate a narrative that rarely presents the full truth, who also fall into the same doom. Occasionally, even the hunter falls into their own snare.

Victims are not just others.

Oh! The handwringing and the condemnation of consequences that would have created other victims long before it touched them, usually those safe and insulated within their privileged cocoon, are rarely naïve and often malevolent without any sense of hypocrisy.

They delude themselves into thinking they are safe. Yet, tragedy is often dispassionate, selecting its victims indiscriminately, to include those who have been the prophets of everything that ails us with their populist oratory.

If there is anything to ponder, it is to be mindful, watchful, considerate, and humane. The past holds us, the present is a gift, and the future remains unknown. May we, in the present, create a past that paves the way for a future filled with contented happiness rather than rueful regret. So, help us, God. Amen!

Honour the day and bless the beauty it presents

Yusuf / Cat Stevens – Morning Has Broken (Official Lyric Video)

The day the Lord has made

As I sat in my living room thinking about how well today went, I felt I should be inspired to write something because there is a blessing that abides, abounds, and abodes with me that gives me an outlook and disposition I rarely can find words to explain.

Let’s look at any day in question, for in my case, every day for a long time has been a blessing, regardless of what happens in it, I have a triumphalist feeling that whatever a day brings will not dampen my desire to consider success and accomplishment.

Someone might say, the day has been difficult, probably, they even hate a particular time of day that it becomes a kind of confession that fulfils what inadvertently becomes prophetic. Whenever I wake up, I bless the Lord and would with great expectation address it as this is the day that the Lord hath made, I will rejoice and be glad in it. [Bible Hub: Psalm 118:24 (KJV)]

How can the day not turn out right if you have been given a day made by the God of beauty, wonder, and miracles?

The morning is a recreation

There are nights when sleep seems to desert me, I struggle to find the rest I need to be fresh for the day ahead. The alarm clock stirs me up as dawn breaks and I slap on the snooze button for the respite of another 10 minutes in which little is achieved compared to if you could get a snooze time of 30 minutes and consequently a power nap.

Then the strains of the hymn, “Morning has broken” seep into your consciousness as with a bounding leap out of bed, you want to celebrate the day like the first of the best, and you begin to own the beauty, the warmth, the bliss, and the sweet communion that it presents. “Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning, born of the one light, Eden saw play!” The hymn continues to define the day. [Hymnary.org: Morning has broken, Like the first morning]

The Boomtown Rats possibly unaware of the joy of the day or even the opportunity the week presents would sing in refrain, “Tell me why I don’t like Mondays.” I’ll tell you why you do not like Mondays; you do not see every morning as God’s recreation of a new day. Yesterday is gone forever, you are given a new start, each new day.

Then, the inspiration for the song itself was from a 16-year-old girl who thought causing the tragedy of a mass shooting at an elementary school would liven up the day. [Wikipedia: I don’t like Mondays]

One can only wonder how a life so bereft of love and the appreciation of goodness would think that senselessly taking innocent lives can be anything to contemplate.

She has been in prison since 1979 and her next parole hearing in 2025 is unlikely to give her any reason to like or dislike Mondays or any other day for that matter. How you rise for the day can quite easily define the rest of your life. [Wikipedia: Cleveland Elementary School shooting (San Diego)]

The cherished American toleration of daily tragedies

Just imagine, we are 45 years after that school shooting spree, and we still have these tragedies happening with such regularity in the United States of America like an incurable madness. To give this some perspective, it appears the first recorded school shooting was in 1764.

You might be forgiven for thinking it is a cherished American tradition, the way these tragedies are tolerated for the sake of the right to bear arms. There have been three school shootings in September 2024, alone. [Wikipedia: List of school shootings in the United States (2000–present), List of school shootings in the United States (before 2000)]

Arise, Shine

To conclude on the thinking that helped in writing this blog, I had an inward witness within that took me to this verse in Scripture. “Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you.” [Bible Hub: Isaiah 60:1 (NKJV)]

There is a glow that comes with the blessing of a new day, you can be the light of it, the sunshine that makes everyone happy, the beauty that gives it meaning, and the memory that makes you full of gratitude. That is why each day is wonderful because as the glory of the Lord rises upon me, I rise to shine and give light to the joy of a new day.

A clear view of the sky in life

A house burnt down

“You know what happens when your house burns down? You get a clear view of the sky.” Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Swimming with the sharks (Season 21, Episode 15) [IMDB: Quotes].

I was about to go to bed when the twist in this episode of Law & Order: SVU was so compelling, that I had to see it to the end, and this was after I had put everything I needed in the bedroom and made to turn off the lights in the living room.

The quote above came in the closing stage of the episode after the issues had been resolved and the conspirators agreed to a deal. The protagonist on whom the storyline was based said, “I could've been a better friend. I've been thinking about it. When you arrested me. I thought it was karma. I burned a lot of bridges in my time. Hell, I burned my whole house down.”

I could be better

There is so much to unpack in that statement, and I could relate to everything she said, for it got me thinking about how I could be a better person, a better lover, a better friend, a better son, a better brother, a better parent, a better colleague, a better anything that is good, wholesome and redounds to the goodness of our humanity.

Moving on, I think about the things I probably should have done or paid more attention to, from the personal to the communal and where commission or omission has found me wanting. There is time for a lot of introspection, for there is not lost in continuous improvement, it would be nowhere near perfect, but getting better is always worthwhile. Knowing you can put the effort into it to do better is always a consideration to entertain and act on.

On bridges, even when I am tempted, I have tried as much as I can, not to burn my bridges. I learnt almost 5 years ago that bridges are not only for your use but for the use of others too. They may need that same bridge you have crossed and long-abandoned to cross the ravine over to you, that is their prerogative, but never burn those bridges, make allowances even if those allowances are taxing on your exploited magnanimity.

Life burnt down

“Hell, I burned my whole house down.” I have probably done that too many times, but what have I done with the ashes? More significantly, when I allowed HIV to ravage my body, it became full-blown AIDS presenting with life-threatening Kaposi’s sarcoma skin cancer that if the therapies did not work I was given a prognosis of 5 weeks, the long tail of cancer that wagged me to exhaustion was I lost everything.

Indeed, I lost my house among many things, and things I had acquired over decades, but rather than look around the ruins that tried to define my existence, I got a clear view of the sky, it was blue, sunny, and beautiful. My view of the sky in the context of my life was hope, I had a resolution that reverberated through my whole being, this too shall pass, and we would get to write a better story; that was the spring of possibility and life that was welling up from within me.

Prospect and possibility

In Yoruba, there is a similar saying that asks us not to despair but to be encouraged with hope and new possibilities, “Ilé ọba t'ójó ẹ̀wà ló bù si.” Using a translation of contextual equivalence rather than an exact interpretation, “You have the prospect of building something more beautiful after the royal palace burnt down.”

I guess you need to acquire the disposition not to dwell on the misfortune, no matter how catastrophic, and we have seen many that would make some hearts fail and extinguish any semblance of hope. For me, that I was alive and living meant I was ready for things ahead, a future, a world of possibilities, the need to walk through this valley of the shadow of death to new still waters and green pastures.

The comfort of knowing that trials are part of the human story, they are milestones we can do without, but if they come, we must pass them and continue on that journey that makes a better story of our experiences. Always seek and find a clear view of the sky, regardless of where you are, let the spirit of hope and encouragement take you to the place where looking back you marvel at the fact that you did not know your own strength.

The man, T. B. Joshua

No grudges held

The passing of Prophet T. B. Joshua is no doubt a tragedy and that is where I would start. There are many people who will attest to the humility, the generosity, the religiosity, the godliness, the charisma, and the powerful ministry of the man, and I am not here to question any of that.

To some, he was a mighty man of God, to some a possible charlatan, to some so absolutely above reproach and the law, unassailable, and unaccountable to anyone, the latter by reason of the building collapse that led to the death of over 100 victims of which 80 were South Africans for whom no justice has been done. Yet, I cannot blame him, I blame the Nigerian system that allowed it.

Blog: Nigeria: The Collapse of Order

Some people would have a big bone to pick with him, be it what they sought that they did not get, or what they were not sure they wanted that they received a good measure of. Between the unhealed and the traumatised may their hopes be realised and their prayers be answered.

And God willing

A few days ago, the man was planning for his birthday and released a video notice about plans towards it, he paced up and down with a sense of apparent unease, at least to my observation, I did wonder what might have made him look a bit discomfited until he held the railing at the end with the comforting words to those who might not be able to attend his birthday this year due to the pandemic having the opportunity for many more birthdays to come.

To anyone who watched that video [YouTube], we can somewhat agree that the prophet had no inkling of his pending demise. Man proposes and God disposes, we find that we need to reflect on the ephemeral nature of our humanity in all the resilience we tend to exhibit that we only have the moment in which we are, the future we do not know, and whilst anticipation and planning is necessary, we of a religious disposition might want to bookend all our schemes with ‘God Willing’.

After it all

In bidding the man farewell and sympathies to his family and to his flock the hope for a worthy shepherd to continue the ministry and legacy of the man. Prophet T. B. Joshua has written his own account in his life and his deeds and gone, what we make of it is now left to us, he cannot edit it to suit his requirements anymore.

There is probably an undiscovered prophet in the wilderness preparing the way for the needy to have their needs met in a fashion, that prophet will be found, and another chapter will begin the munificence of lofty promises, fantastic rituals, and spectacular flashes of the miraculous to the extent of believability or ridiculousness, that would keep the flock enthralled. We are who we are.

Opinion: Where addiction and tragedy can confuse issues

It is a sad story

I just read an article posted on LinkedIn titled, Opioids, My Mom's Death, and Why People Trust Science Less and the human side of the story is very sad, however, the additional narrative is opinion, conjecture, suspect and unfortunate.

There is a conflation of issues along with unresolved conflicts that need to be separated before this article tagged as an Editor’s Pick, Healthcare and Pharmaceutical are taken in without questioning or review.

Separate the issues

Walking back the issues, there is grief at a mother’s death, addiction to pain-killers that came as a result of prophylaxis for osteoporosis, estrangement, and then the machinations of the pharmaceutical industrial complex, known as Big-Pharma.

There is no doubt that Big-Pharma, Big-Tobacco, Big-Oil, Big-Manufacturing, Big-Agriculture and Big-Anything have a lot to answer for about their products and the effects of the production and use of those products on people, on the environment, and everything that makes for the wellbeing of our common humanity, but that is addressing the symptom.

The fundamentals would always be down to the individual, their personality and their experiences in how persuadable they are and this is not to castigate the strength of character of anyone, but missing that point would allow for drawing the wrong conclusions.

Scientific advancement has done wonders

For instance, it is thanks to the contributions of scientific research and medicine that I am alive today, having at one time been at death’s door with a prognosis of 5 weeks to live if my physiology could not tolerate and respond to the regimen of therapy I was being prescribed.

At the lowest point, I was in such unbearable pain that if not for the need to monitor my vitals, I would have been anaesthetised to manage the stress of it. Before I was admitted to the hospital, I was on Tramadol, then on the day I was admitted, I was given a morphine skin patch that had to be taken off after two days because I could not keep my food down and from then on, I was put on Oxycontin and Paracetamol with Codeine.

Whilst it appeared to manage the pain, when a deep biopsy was done on the fungating tumours under the sole of my left foot, 7 shots of local anaesthetic did very little to deaden to the pain. I simply bit on a think piece of a folded napkin as they prodded the anger in my foot.

Managing pain alone

On leaving the hospital, I was prescribed a list of pain and nausea management drugs that I was concerned about the cumulative soporific effects of the drugs. In addition to the earlier prescribed drugs, I was given a Fentanyl patch and that dosage was doubled when I reported that I was still in very much pain. That was when the equilibrium for my pain management was reached, I was not as pre-occupied with the pain as I took in 7 sessions of chemotherapy and the cancer lesions healed.

Whilst the lesions had gone and all the necrotised skin had been removed to reveal fresh skin, I was still in pain into the 4^th month of my diagnosis, then the pain began to subside. One Sunday, the patch fell off my skin, I did not know until then that a patch retainer film could be worn to keep the patch in place. Until the effects of the new patch kicked in, I was in such pain I began to laugh almost into delirium, but that produced endorphins to ease the pain. My friend thought I was going crazy, but I knew what I was doing.

Coming off pain killers

The pain of cancer is in another realm, it cannot be explained, the therapy for chronic pain has addictive qualities too. When the pain had gone, I could not just take off the patch, I had to wean myself off it, this is where the mind and the will come to play. Addiction has much of its roots in the psyche first than in its palliative effects. The palliative which is in itself a kind of comfort has to be consciously managed.

In my case, it took another 2 months to come completely off the patch and other pain medication. With the patch, I cut it in half and left it on for longer, each patch dosage halved and left on for much longer until my body could do without the drug.

Then, we all have innate tendencies to addiction and some people might be able to avoid addiction. There was another instance where a change in drug regimen meant I could not sleep, the first suggestion was to put me on sleeping medication, however, I thought of working a plan to take my pills at a certain time and avoid completely drug-induced sleep. I could see the dangers of becoming dependent on sleeping pills.

Addiction is first personal

Going back to the purpose of writing this blog, addiction has social, emotional, economic, relationship and physical consequences. In my view, addiction is not just to drugs or the abuse of drugs, alcohol, it could be sex, it could be religion or any other activity. The person and people around that person suffer, and that is very sad.

Regardless of what brought on the addiction, it is always first a personal struggle, what other factors contribute to it does not take away from how the person might have succumbed to addiction. Whether we fail to be better informed of the debilitating side-effects of a drug does not take away from the balance between efficacy and damage.

Apportion rightly

The science would suggest a drug can do something, most drugs have to recoup research and development costs and it unfortunate that some people put the profit motive well and above the welfare of patients and customers – that is commerce, we cannot avoid it.

It is, however, a long stretch to conflate personal tragedy, addiction, the science and the commerce into one clickable title of Opioids, My Mom's Death, and Why People Trust Science Less and draw the conclusions in the piece without properly assuming personal responsibility on the one hand and understanding that every individual has a unique physiology that adapts to medication in different ways which could influence the mind too.

I recall my doctor saying they could treat my condition but it depended on my physiology to tolerate the medical regimen. I lost a friend to a similar condition because his physiology did not have the capacity to tolerate the regimen of chemotherapy.

The responsibility of addiction remains a personal thing, the responsibility for being properly informed lies within the person, their medical support, the pharmaceutical companies and the science that balances efficacy with possible side-effects, with the hope that efficacy outweighs side-effects.

I am sorry, the writer lost his mother to addiction, but if we are to trust science less because of the conflicts of interest between treatment and commerce, we would all die sooner in more misery and pain with respite or comfort. That is why these issues need to be treated completely separately even if they are linked in a personal tragedy.

Opinion: Save the children from these people - Part I - The South Korean Ferry disaster

The father in me

Maybe just a word or two needs to be said about a number tragedies that have involved children that I have tweeted about lately.

I find myself having never exploited the possibility of having children and now by reason of the effects of chemotherapy possibly having no ability to bear my own children.

That said, age and maturity suggests and imposes on me a sense of both parenthood and grandparenthood that it is impossible for me not to at the very least feel like a parent would about their child or children in every way from the ordinary things of life, the celebration of successes or the unfortunate waves of anxiety and tragedy.

A lost integrity

In faraway South Korea, it was the man-made disaster of a ferry sinking that took with it hundreds of children’s lives as the captain of the ship shirked his responsibility and posed as a victim to get treatment.

Maritime responsibility has changed since the days of the Titanic or before then when the captain, Edward Smith went down with his ship rather than turn up later with crocodile tears asking for forgiveness and what not.

The ethos and integrity of captainship does not seem to have been installed in the captain of Costa Concordia and now MV Sewol, which meant that passengers under their care suffered where they should have been better cared for especially where the accidents in both cases were caused by grave errors of judgement committed by men with character flaws undiscovered until tragedy struck.

English for disasters

There is the other issue about the crew who were both chaotic and indecisive considering it was clear that the situation they were in was beyond redemption. Maybe it is a problem with the Power Distance Index of the Korean language as Malcolm Gladwell observed in his book Outliers with regards to air accidents.

It makes one suggest that in times of an emergency one should dispense with protocols and get straight to the point about what the power is, who it affects, what help is needed and be clear as to how soon they need that assistance.

From what transpired between the crew in the harbourmasters, neither was authoritative nor clear, in the process we have the tragedy of the needless loss of life that could been avoided even if the ship was definitely going to be lost. English offers clarity removing unnecessary hierarchies and probably should become the maritime language of communication as we have for aviation.

Peace, they must find

The agony of the parents unaware of the fact of their children’s watery demise is beyond what words can express, beyond being sorry for their loss, even enforcing the most severe penalties against the cowardly crew would not begin to assuage the pain of the death of the innocents.

May they find strength, comfort and some peace through their faith or any support systems made available to them in these troubling times.

Yet, we must save the children from those who would not assume the responsibility they have in despatching their duties.

Editorial: Eleventh of May 2011

No jumping to conclusions with closed doors

One may never understand what informs irrational behaviour by some that their actions endanger themselves and the lives of others.

It goes without saying that the complexity of the mind whilst allowing for moderation of behaviour by societal mores still has some just appearing to go off tangentially and it is only providence that prevents a catastrophic mishap.

We can be irked and piqued by circumstances beyond our control that make us lose patience and or even cause lateness that the people responsible do not do enough to placate the situation.

Air travel is generally safe but it has lost most of its allure of pleasure, there are others that do not fly well, they take to the bottle and other agents to help them through the journey.

The case of a man caught between different episodic issues trying to open the door to an airplane which was halfway between Orlando and Boston implies the airplane did not have steps set to the door for disembarkation.

Whilst the man would see a face of the law scowling and breathing fire, it is incumbent on us to keep an open mind and since the door was still closed there should be no danger of us jumping to conclusions either.

No invective enough to lambast this cretin

The sad death of 11 National Youth Service Corps members during the recently concluded Nigerian elections tugs at the heartstrings with sorrow and anger. This situation was in every way avoidable if all those responsible for their safety had not shirked their responsibilities.

Passing the buck is bad enough but the governor of the host state whose remit it was to ensure security and peace plumbed the depths of calumny and issued utterances that made many think he lacked both a heart and a mind.

Having first averred that the deaths of the people were a course of destiny they could not avoid, he contemned their memory by comparing their loss of life to the loss of replaceable property.

The backlash that followed his insensitive, intemperate, irresponsible and atrociously stupid comments had him trying to redeem himself by saying he would, given the opportunity personally shoot the killers of those people.

It leaves reasonable people completely lost for words as it belies a cretinous crop of nonentities that Nigeria has been cursed to have elected for public office.

There will be life insurance pay-outs, compensation for loss of life, help for their families, the memorialisation of martyrdom and much more, none of which can attempt to make amends for these tragedies.

The greater worry is what the smell of money might do to others who scenting a largess would be more preoccupied with how they can deprive those families of that blood-money for their selfish ends.

It goes without saying, the deaths were avoidable, the mobs should have been corralled and no government official should have been caught unawares by the eruption of violence and how it developed into carnage.

Sally Clark - Medical profession hubris or humiliated

Preamble

The Many Tragedies of Sally Clark is a blog I wrote about two months ago - a doctor camped out there for a few days with some comments to which I wrote a few lengthy responses, this new blog developed as a result of comments left therein.

The boss, the priest and the doctor

There was a time when people did not question their bosses, their priest or their doctor. Nowadays, the bosses can find themselves in hot water, besides, the moment people learnt how to build a career, and they took control of the decision of who they would want as boss.

The priest who still stands as succourer is now challenged in that role by the therapist with a bottle of pills and the moment people learnt to read the Bible, the word of the priest was no more as infallible as it once was, much as a good few are getting into trouble lately.

One profession that has failed to grasp the changing times and seasons is the medical profession, they still scribble in illegible handwriting and we rarely get a second opinion of their views, even in a life threatening situation.

Doing a good job

A number of cases have highlighted that fact that doctors want to be applauded as people who save life and that should be all-encompassing beyond any need for accountability or ethical adaptation to the realities of what society now expects or these professionals.

In the past week, I have been engaged within the comment fields of a certain blog I wrote a few months ago with a doctor who takes a completely different view from the tone and context of my write-up.

It was about the case of Sally Clark, the woman who was convicted and then acquitted of the murder/cot-deaths of her two infant sons, she died recently, which triggered my original write-up.

Exercise cautionary expertise

However, a good deal of my commentary centred around the mystique of expertise that exuded from the expert witness a renowned and celebrated consultant paediatrician who had formulated a behavioural syndrome which became the pivot on which the case against the many women who endured the tragedies of cot-deaths faced criminal trials.

When the famous and respected professor veered out his realm of expertise into the superfluous statistics, the judge, jury and press were completely enthralled by the numbers; it is almost beyond debate that those numbers influenced the outcomes of those cases.

When the numbers were really tested against realities, most of the convictions became unsafe, additional information about the health conditions of the victim infants seemed to point to other exculpatory evidence which was not offered as part of case evidence.

The need for moral responsibility

I stand by the views I expressed in my earlier post, professionals have responsibilities, to know what they are talking about and appreciate the value or import of their opinions on humanity, it is pertinent to be confident however one should exercise competence with a sense of consideration; it is called understanding your moral responsibility.

As the exchanges developed certain key issues arose, some like soundbites with an emotive tinge, but serious in any case, four of those issues I address below:

Doctors don't take the Hippocratic Oath - This shows how behind the times I must have been, doctors used to take this oath with the view that they pledge to preserve life. My view is the preservation no more just a physiological or anatomical issue, there other areas of social responsibility that the doctor occupies, the gravitas of their profession confers on them some sweeping purvey over their patient's lives, that issue must become part of any 21^st Century medical curriculum.

Dead babies who have no advocate - I would that any baby that dies in any suspicious circumstances has a thorough, confident, intelligent, meticulous and fair advocate to state their case. The babies' and the parents' rights should and must be protected and safeguarded from unwarranted opprobrium.

The automatic imputation of guilt and liability on the parents in order to seek some sort of retributive justice for the innocents is an extreme that should be unacceptable in our society. Experts must ensure they have complete review of all the circumstances before they postulate. Where it can be proven that the parents are culpable, then that evidence and the presentation must be beyond reasonable doubt.

Doctors treat patients not laboratory results - I fear for this statement, indeed doctors should be treating patients but in most cases no treatment can conclusively be administered without the benefit of laboratory results. One good example was the subject of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Medicine, the discovery of bacteria in the stomach against the overarching body of medical knowledge. The bacterium - helicobacter pylori - was found to be causative of certain ulcers and even cancer, who would have thought certain cancers could be treated with antibiotics.

Certain evidence suggested that a cot-death victim might have died of staphylococcal septicaemia; the commentator contends the child did not die of this infection, but if the pathologist had offered this evidence to doctors when the child took ill weeks before, there might have been a different outcome from better observation.

The medical profession is against the GMC - This is where doctors need a review of their activities beyond their education and expertise; their interaction with the public.

I quote liberally from the Economist, professions have at least four elements; an accepted body of knowledge, a system for certifying mastery of that knowledge before it can be practised, a commitment to the public good and an enforceable code of ethics.

The medical profession does quite well with the first two, the commitment to the public good cannot however be monitored and validated by just the medical profession, the General Medical Council (GMC) serves the purpose of ensuring that a doctor who treats the public can cultivate the trust of the public.

Where this ability to maintain and cultivate trust is compromised, the license to practise comes under review and it can be revoked.

Saving the medical profession

Whilst there was an uproar in the medical fraternity when Professor Sir Roy Meadow was struck off, the public good was served and is what esteemed profession failed to recognise.

The GMC continues to save the medical profession from a mounting crisis of public confidence which is critical to the practise of medicine.

The commentator laments the dearth of paediatric expertise since the incident at Alder Hey Children's hospital where consultants removed for storage organs of dead children without the consent of the parents.

For the advancement of child medicine there is probably a case for removing the organs but definitely not without consent.

The bane of intellectual arrogance

Sometimes, hubris and seeming unassailability can becloud the ability for professions to recognise their moral responsibilities in a public setting and the public is getting fed up with intellectual arrogance being displayed and acted out in dictats from on high.

We might not have the knowledge or expertise but we all have access to information and these compete for attention in order to make personal quality decisions in our lives.

This is the challenge that faces the medical profession and it is one they would have to embrace from the student to the emeritus professor if they are to suffer lesser vexatious scrutiny and keep out of court or present themselves to a GMC hearing.

On closer inspection the loss of two children to cot-death was a great tragedy regardless of the class demographic; the case that followed was a travesty considering what further information made the sentences handed out unsafe; the ensuing court battles revealed a fundamental debacle and error of judgement in accepting ideas outside the professional purvey of an expert on the whole, neither medicine nor the public good was properly served.

The death of Sally Clark was the sorry end to the clash between a proud and almost arrogant profession and the public they serve.

The many tragedies of Sally Clark

Experts indeed

The function of an expert is not necessarily to get it right, but to get it wrong for more sophisticated reasons. This should be attributable since I read it from I think the Economist many years ago, I cannot remember who made the statement.

I am sure there are many who have lived that credo when met with a situation they as experts are supposed to offer some authoritative opinion and the client ends up being baffled with science, confounded with jargon and assuredly made to feel inferior for not appreciating or understanding that opinion, in the end, obfuscate with atrocious statistics skewed to validate your point.

The death of Sally Clark

This comes about when I read with sadness that the mother who had been convicted and then acquitted of killing her two baby sons had died suddenly and unexpectedly.

This woman can only have been Sally Clark, and so great a tragedy had befallen her and her family too many times to mention, but for those who followed her travails, she died a victim, a martyr, a crusader and a sacrifice; sacrificed to appease the gravitas of an expert.

Cot death theories

As fate would have it, this woman suffered the death of two children within weeks of their birth just about 2 years apart in what has become known as cot deaths. Now cot deaths have been attributable to all sorts of circumstances but no clear indication as to why babies suddenly die in the comfort of their cots, the more scientific term is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

Sadly, in Sally Clark's case, this happened to her twice, where experts should have dispatched their sense of duty and ethical responsibility to represent the truth fully without reservation, they suggested that she might have murdered her sons.

The case for the prosecution was then built on corroborating this suspicion and creating the seeming judicial fact that she had in some evil concupiscence shook her babies violently till their lives could no more abide their bodies and they died.

The expert witness

Enter the Expert Witness - Professor Sir Roy Meadow, a consultant paediatrician who had gained prominence from the seminal study of cot deaths which he postulated were mostly caused by child abuse through that he termed - Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy - a situation where a person makes a victim of another to gain attention, usually their wards or children.

Certain coincidences allowed for this theory to take hold and become part of the assessment of understanding why certain families lost their young children as the professor postulated with statements like "There is no evidence that cot deaths runs in families but there is plenty of evidence that child abuse does". This sealed Sally Clark's fate such that other evidence that one of the children might have died of a bacterial infection never got to the police, the defence or prosecution.

Debunking the expert

The weight of professorial gravitas allowed for incredible statements which suggested that the possibility of two cot deaths happening in one family was 1 in 73 million; this got the Royal Statistical Society quite miffed that they contended that there was no statistical basis for this assertion.

However, these assertions lead to a number of convictions for murder where the children had suffered cot deaths which might have been related to other un-researched phenomena, but everyone bought the expert opinion of Professor Sir Roy Meadow who had been knighted for his services to child health.

Sally Clark spent 3 years in prison, lost her first appeal because the overwhelming evidence of the professor was indisputable but such was the confidence of her family in her innocence that they appealed again and this time with new evidence and the debunking of the professor's statistical whammy.

With her release came the review of other similar cases especially where the professor had been called as the expert witness making those cases and convictions unsafe, as the women were freed the professor's reputation began to unravel.

Of sorrow and sad most despairing

One cannot begin to imagine the amassed tragedy of having lost a child and then having the ordeal of being accused of killing your child, leading to a trial, conviction and prison.

I am sure there might have deep dark times when Sally Clark might have almost believed that she did indeed kill her sons, despair, despondency, dejection and depression all colluded to weaken her resolve, which in the end could have contributed to her death at 42 even though she had been freed for prison for quite a while.

The expert however, whose intellectual arrogance allowed him to project postulations and suppositions as realities fights for his reputation having been struck of the list of doctors had to seek legal redress to be reinstated, he however is yet without remorse about how he completely destroyed the lives of grieving mothers to the enhancement of his career.

The expert's cardinal responsibilities

An expert has a duty of care to be honest, frank, informative and truthful, the ethical dimension to this expects that the expert understand that there is a responsibility when entrusted with listening ears for your opinion whilst that should be tempered with understanding the consequences of the proffered views and how that impacts on people and circumstances.

I would not be moved if the professor's profession titles are rescinded and his knighthood revoked, his handiwork has done nothing for the promotion of child health, rather he created a branch of study that allows the subjective assessment of circumstances to visit great misfortune on hapless grieving mothers.

The professor is an example of what an expert should not be, very much like the many Nigeria professors in ministerial positions doing nothing.

The disabling ignorance of experts

The words of Peter Drucker come to mind about what an expert should meditate on - discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it - it is sometimes difficult to appreciate intellectual arrogance in oneself, it is also a sign of strong character, principles and humility to accept your expertise is not all so encompassing that you have answers to everything or cannot go back and review your data and fact before offering an opinion.

An expert offers an opinion, that opinion has authority, with authority comes influence, usually indirect influence because someone else has to make decisions which might be solely based on this opinions, decisions that affect direction, strategy, missions and purposes, consequently, lives and livelihoods.

If you thinking you are just part of the chaos continuum, a butterfly flapping wings here and unsure of where the earthquakes would occur, think again, you might just be that extra force to push on either the brake or acceleration pedal.

Think before you pontificate

For every responsibility, there is a matter of consequence, you have to be ready to face up to the consequences especially if what you have proffered would surely destroy people's lives, Professor Sir Roy Meadows was the expert from Hell for Sally Clark, Trupti Patel, Angela Cannings and the Gays - I hope those left do get help beyond a gross miscarriage of justice being judicially restored; for Sally Clark, they say, she never really fully recovered from her ordeal, not many people can.

Rest In Peace - Sally Clark; if you do find the good life in the thereafter, I hope that you are comforted with seeing your sons again.