Motherisk: Hospital for Sick Children. Toronto; Major Development; Reporter Rachel Mendleson (Toronto Star) reports that "The stunning litany of problems uncovered at the Hospital for Sick Children’s Motherisk laboratory has prompted the province to launch a review of the oversight and accountability of Ontario’s forensic labs."..."The Motherisk scandal, which was revealed by a Star investigation in late 2014, has cast doubt over thousands of child protection proceedings across Canada that relied on the lab’s discredited hair-strand drug and alcohol tests from the late ’90s to spring of 2015, when Sick Kids closed the lab. It also exposed oversight gaps at Sick Kids and in the justice system, which failed to ensure that Motherisk’s hair tests met the high bar for evidence presented in court, and has served as yet another reminder of the dangers of flawed forensics. In December 2015, a retired judge appointed by the province to review the previous decade’s worth of Motherisk hair tests concluded the lab’s operations “fell woefully short of internationally recognized forensic standards,” and the tests were “inadequate” and “unreliable” for use in criminal and child protection cases. Motherisk was never accredited as a forensic lab. It did not have clinical accreditation, which is not as stringent as forensic accreditation but ensures basic standards are being met, until 2011. In her report, Justice Susan Lang found the lab did not double-check results before August 2010, until which point it reported screening-test results despite “an explicit warning” that the results were preliminary and must be confirmed. Neither the hospital nor Motherisk leadership appreciated that the nature of the tests the lab carried out was forensic, which Lang defined as being “used for a legal purpose.” Staff routinely performed a forensic service yet lacked the forensic training required to meet the stringent standards for evidence presented in court, she said. Lang also found Sick Kids failed to provide “meaningful oversight” and did not learn from the lessons of the 2008 public inquiry into Charles Smith, a former Sick Kids pediatric forensic pathologist, whose flawed autopsy analyses tainted more than a dozen cases."

STORY: "Motherisk scandal prompts review of Ontario’s forensic labs," by Rachel Mendleson, published by The Toronto Star on May 30, 2017.

SUB-HEADING: "Community Safety Minister Marie-France Lalonde says the province "will be moving forward on mandatory accreditation" for Ontario forensic labs, in the wake of the Motherisk scandal."

GIST: "The stunning litany of problems uncovered at the Hospital for Sick Children’s Motherisk laboratory has prompted the province to launch a review of the oversight and accountability of Ontario’s forensic labs. The review will examine setting mandatory accreditation standards for forensic labs, as well as improving forensic training and increasing transparency. Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services Marie-France Lalonde said the failings at Motherisk “taught us that we need to do better.” “We need to make sure that the public confidence is there,” Lalonde said in an interview on Monday. “We want to ensure that the justice system . . . can rely on very strong evidence” and the “same standard of training for all our labs.” The ministry will hold consultations in June with key stakeholders, including experts from the justice sector, forensic associations, civil liberties groups, Indigenous organizations, laboratories and accreditation bodies. The Motherisk scandal, which was revealed by a Star investigation in late 2014, has cast doubt over thousands of child protection proceedings across Canada that relied on the lab’s discredited hair-strand drug and alcohol tests from the late ’90s to spring of 2015, when Sick Kids closed the lab.

It also exposed oversight gaps at Sick Kids and in the justice system, which failed to ensure that Motherisk’s hair tests met the high bar for evidence presented in court, and has served as yet another reminder of the dangers of flawed forensics. In December 2015, a retired judge appointed by the province to review the previous decade’s worth of Motherisk hair tests concluded the lab’s operations “fell woefully short of internationally recognized forensic standards,” and the tests were “inadequate” and “unreliable” for use in criminal and child protection cases. Motherisk was never accredited as a forensic lab. It did not have clinical accreditation, which is not as stringent as forensic accreditation but ensures basic standards are being met, until 2011. In her report, Justice Susan Lang found the lab did not double-check results before August 2010, until which point it reported screening-test results despite “an explicit warning” that the results were preliminary and must be confirmed. Neither the hospital nor Motherisk leadership appreciated that the nature of the tests the lab carried out was forensic, which Lang defined as being “used for a legal purpose.” Staff routinely performed a forensic service yet lacked the forensic training required to meet the stringent standards for evidence presented in court, she said. Lang also found Sick Kids failed to provide “meaningful oversight” and did not learn from the lessons of the 2008 public inquiry into Charles Smith, a former Sick Kids pediatric forensic pathologist, whose flawed autopsy analyses tainted more than a dozen cases. Lalonde said these incidents have prompted the province to explore the possibility of creating a process of mandatory accreditation for labs performing forensic services “in a very serious way.”........As Lang said in her report, forensic accreditation is not currently required for a lab to perform tests for forensic purposes. The Standards Council of Canada, a federal Crown corporation, is responsible for accrediting forensic labs based on international standards, which include strict rules for documentation and chain-of-custody procedures. Toronto criminal defence lawyer James Lockyer, who was instrumental in exposing the failings at Motherisk, said the review is long overdue. “If a proper accreditation process had been in place 10 years ago for Motherisk, presumably we wouldn’t have had these problems. They would have been compelled to function properly in a scientific manner,” he said. From 2005 to 2015, Motherisk performed its hair-strand tests for 16,000 individuals at the request of Ontario’s child protection agencies — 54 per cent of whom tested positive for drugs or alcohol, Lang found. The tests were also relied upon in thousands of child protection cases in B.C., Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Between January 2007 and March 2015, the lab’s revenues exceeded $11 million, $6.8 million of which came from children’s aid organizations, as the Star has previously reported. Used primarily as evidence of parental substance abuse, the results of Motherisk’s hair tests were rarely challenged in legal proceedings, and influenced decisions to remove children from their families. On Lang’s recommendation, the province established the Motherisk Commission in January to probe child protection cases in Ontario that relied, in part, on Motherisk’s hair testing evidence, and offer counselling and legal assistance to affected families. Led by retired judge Judith Beaman, the commission has identified 41 cases in which there was a “substantial reliance” on Motherisk testing out of 701 files reviewed so far. Motherisk founder and longtime director Gideon Koren, who retired from Sick Kids in the summer of 2015 and is now working in Israel, is under investigation by the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Sick Kids, Koren and former Motherisk lab manager Joey Gareri are named in several lawsuits, including a proposed class action seeking $200 million in damages for negligence and $250 million in punitive damages."

The entire story can be found at: 

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/05/30/motherisk-scandal-prompts-review-of-ontarios-forensic-labs.html

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.