Talk:Toronto hospital baby deaths

Comments

I have added the citation for the Michele Mandel article which talks about Phylis Trayner as a suspect never charged. Also, added a LawNow article which indicates a second nurse was publicly described as a suspect (although not named in that article -- Phylis Trayner is that unnamed nurse). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cdnjock (talk • contribs) 23:22, 22 October 2011‎ (UTC)

Untitled

I am not a Wiki edit expert, but was struggling with the overall content, which seems to imply that despite the exoneration of Susan Nelles and no charges being laid against Phyllis Trayner, that one of the them was indeed responsible for the deaths. That should be left to the reader. However, all of the facts need to be spelled out coherently. Susan Nelles was charged with 4 murders. She was exonerated at preliminary trial as proof was provided that she was on a 10 day vacation when one of the 4 deaths occurred, and was not on duty when a second of the 4 deaths occurred, due to switching shifts with another nurse. I do not have the details on why the other 2 murder charges were dropped as I do not have access to the legal case transcripts. The external articles that do exist have contradictions - one says that there was a big increase in the number of deaths (as much as 623% higher), while another says that the overall death rate in the hospital did not change.

I was 21 years old and living in Toronto in 1981 and remember the turmoil at the time. In my opinion, the Attorney General's office caved to the media generated public pressure to charge someone without doing proper due dilligence. This is why Susan Nelles was partially successful in her malicious prosecution suit. Glad to see that the legal community, the media, and the medical community has not forgotten about this case. I personally would like to believe that the police and hospital investigators neglected to look at the equipment as a possible cause of these deaths and the deaths were indeed a result of the MBT in the syringes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cdnjock (talk • contribs) 23:22, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Wiki page states "citation needed" for Phyllis Trayner reference

I'm not wiki-friendly, so I'll let someone else add the following to the article if they feel it's appropriate.

You were looking for a reference for Phylis Trayner. Here is an article posted at the time of her death, which documents that she was suspected of the murders but never charged. The article also questions whether these were actual murders, although other news articles (which appear to have 'aged out' and are no longer available online) assert the death rate spike that occurred only when that nursing shift was on, and reduced back to normal after the investigation started, would tend to support that they were.

I was surprised to read that this case is considered to be the largest serial killing spree (the article wrongly describes it as mass murder) in Toronto's history.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Crime/2011/03/05/17510461.html Sick Kids cold case getting colder By MICHELE MANDEL, QMI Agency "TORONTO -- For decades, Phyllis Trayner lived under a cloud of suspicion as the nurse believed to have killed all those babies at Sick Kids." 70.29.81.77 (talk) 16:11, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Change of title?

The article indicates that there is now doubt as to whether these baby deaths were actually murders. Perhaps then the title should be changed (or moved in Wikispeak) to Toronto Hospital Baby Deaths). Dirac66 (talk) 19:31, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Toronto hospital baby deaths. EdJohnston (talk) 02:47, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

---

Toronto Hospital Murders → Toronto Sick Kids hospital baby deaths – To claim the deaths as murders is hopelessly POV as all attempts to accuse nurses of murder simply for being on duty at the time of the deaths either were dismissed at trial or never taken to court. There is also subsequent evidence [1] that the deaths were caused by chemical contamination of syringes due to their design/manufacture and not by murder. K7L (talk) 13:38, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

• Support The title is POV and the allegation of murder seems to have lost force. However, I think the name of the hospital needs further research. The hospital's website is titled SickKids. Many Google references come up as The Hospital for Sick Children, and that seems to have been the hospital's name at the time of the incidents.[2] I prefer Toronto hospital baby deaths (as suggested by Dirac66, but without the capital letters). --MelanieN (talk) 18:02, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
• Comment there's more than one hospital in Toronto, so the current name and the suggested "Toronto hospital baby deaths" are horribly generic. Further, the proposed "Toronto Sick Kids hospital baby deaths" is also generic, since there have been many baby deaths at Sick Kids, some from infection epidemics, which one might expect some articles on. So I propose 1980-1981 Toronto Sick Kids hospital baby deaths controversy instead -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 00:30, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

You really think there have been other hospital deaths that meet WP:EVENT in Canada's largest city but don't have articles yet? At any rate, your suggestion is overprecise. --BDD (talk) 20:51, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

• Support a move to Toronto Sick Kids hospital baby deaths. Bearian (talk) 20:02, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
• Why the difference from the name of the hospital article, Hospital for Sick Children? --BDD (talk) 21:55, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
• Support, sounds more NPOV with the proposed change. — Cirt (talk) 18:15, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
• Comment I'd just like to point out that there is no such place as the Toronto Sick Kids Hospital. The name of the hospital still appears to be "the Hospital for Sick Children" (no "Toronto") [3] nicknamed/branded SickKids (with no space, no "Toronto", and no word "hospital").[4] At the time of the events the name was the Hospital for Sick Children. --MelanieN (talk) 03:35, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
• Support Toronto hospital baby deaths per Dirac66 and MelanieN. --BDD (talk) 20:49, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

More on the PMT2 hypothesis

I think that the article as it was definitely had the point of view that the deaths were murders. The named sources for that were the result of the official enquiry (later strongly criticised) and the inclusion of the case in an encyclopedia of serial killers. In fact, the single page of the encyclopedia on the case contains different facts than the ones attributed to it! The other main reference was a very informative newspaper article from years later which calls the whole affair a witchhunt and repeats the serious criticism which was later made of the Granger report (the report of the commission of enquiry). I have added material including links on the alternative hypothesis that deaths were caused by leakage of a chemical used in manufacture of medical rubber tubing, known to be toxic, known to cause allergic reaction, believed to have caused deaths in the UK and in Japan in a similar setting, and most importantly, known to be mistaken for digoxin by standard tests for the latter. Perhaps a link to the report of the commission of enquiry ("the Granger report") would be useful in the article: https://archive.org/stream/reportofsickkids00onta/reportofsickkids00onta_djvu.txt Apart from the book by Newton cataloguing serial killers, which contains a careful summary of the affair, the Toronto hospital deaths and Susan Nelles are not listed in any of the recent compendia of Health Care Serial Killers such as the 2014 paper of Yardley and Wilson. Amusingly, Newton points out that another suspicious and apparently digoxin related death happened *after* the enquiry had started, at which time one may expect that the earlier suspects, first Nelles, them Trayner, were not active on the ward! Richard Gill (talk) 13:59, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I found one good book which argues against the PMT2 hypothesis and finds the case still very suspicious: Deadly Outbreaks: How Medical Detectives Save Lives Threatened by Killer Pandemics, Exotic Viruses, and Drug-Resistant Parasites, by the epidemiologist Alexandra M. Levitt (2015) https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Outbreaks-Detectives-Threatened-Drug-Resistant/dp/1634502663 It has a whole chapter on the case. Richard Gill (talk) 14:25, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I have a problem with the Levitt book: It reads like a hagiography of the CDC's EIS and judging from the foreword, which gives the book's history, it was intended from the get-go as a paean to CDC "medical detectives". It may be well reviewed by people who don't know better, but I found it sloppy (really, who could be expected to know the correct name of an obscure force like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police...).

I have to admit that my own personal bias is that "forensic epidemiology" itself seems like an oxymoron -- the necessarily post-hoc application of population-based statistics to individual incidents. What little I know of the people who base their livelihoods on it has not reassured me. alacarte (talk) 12:24, 19 October 2022 (UTC)