this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
24 points (83.3% liked)

World News

39110 readers
2390 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Archive link

Letby appeared to have been a psychologically healthy and happy person. She had many close friends. Her nursing colleagues spoke highly of her care and dedication. A detective with the Cheshire police, which led the investigation, said, “This is completely unprecedented in that there doesn’t seem to be anything to say” about why Letby would kill babies. “There isn’t really anything we have found in her background that’s anything other than normal.”

Letby had worked on a struggling neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, run by the National Health Service, in the West of England, near Wales. The case centered on a cluster of seven deaths, between June, 2015, and June, 2016. All but one of the babies were premature; three of them weighed less than three pounds. No one ever saw Letby harming a child, and the coroner did not find foul play in any of the deaths.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] geophysicist@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 months ago (3 children)

This is classic muddying of a clear cut case for drama only. This was infamous in the UK for the fact that there had been so many warnings about her by senior doctors, which had not been acted on until far far too late

[–] juicy 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Did you read the full article?

[–] geophysicist@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I read the summary in this post, and I've read enough detailed information about this case from British news sources already

[–] juicy 4 points 6 months ago

Then you should read the full article. I didn't attempt to summarize the (long) article. I just pasted a couple paragraphs from the beginning. It's pretty damning. To give a partial list:

  1. The hospital she worked in was understaffed and underfunded to the point that patient care suffered along several dimensions.

  2. The statistical likelihood of her happening to be present when the deaths occurred is not nearly as low as it would appear. Expert statsticians have weighed in with concerns.

  3. Their are no solid theories as to how she killed the babies. According to experts, the methods proposed by the police have major inconsistencies with the evidence available.

  4. Everyone she worked with, including patients, thought highly of her, her skill, and her care. The suspicion began only due to the seeming impossible coincidence of her presence at so many deaths. See point two above.

  5. The health system and politicians are loathe to blame underfunding and policy choices undermining hospital operations for the deaths. All the expert witnesses were from the NHS. The police case was initiated by an ambitious politician who used the case to catapult his career.

  6. Her defense did not call a single expert witness to the stand.

  7. There is no apparent motive or psychological pathologies to explain the alleged behavior.

  8. There are at least two documented cases of healthcare workers being wrongly convicted of murder for what turned out to be coincidental strings of natural deaths.

As you can see, there is no smoking gun, succinct argument for her innocence. Funny enough, there's no smoking gun, succinct proof of her guilt either. The evidence in her favor is subtle, but extensive. After reading the article, it's clear that unless the author is ommitting some important facts or otherwise misleading the reader, there is not nearly enough evidence to justify convicting this poor woman.