Yes, because that would actually be fucking useful.

I almost want to flag this post off the front page due to how goddamned useless that article is. And the thing is? It's actually pretty decently written. It was engaging enough to finish reading it.

Or rather, not finish reading it: there is at least two paragraphs left that have not been published. Was it a lab fuckup? The inhaler (which also indicates a lab fuckup, since they should have looked at her medical records to deal with known false positives)? Is she going to sue for mental distress, malpractice, whatever?

What the hell.

Edit: Oh, and like half the HN community are asthmatics and are on inhalers. Can one of us be whisked off by the government for lab fuckups? Can this go on our permanent record due to their incompetence?

And as for that woman, can she get this expunged off her record? Once you're tagged by CPS, unless you deal with them with a firm hand, they love to fuck up children's lives.

Disclaimer: I grew up in Maine, I've seen repeatedly what CPS has done to families due to their incompetence, I have no reason to think that CPS in other states are any better.

If you're a parent, and you care about your child, treat the CPS like a terrorist threat. Do not talk to them unless you're with your lawyer, do not answer their questions, and teach your child the same. Their job is to make you guilty to justify their budget, not protect children.

Your issue with the article is half the point of the article. All that emotional trauma with a hurried apology and no explanation.

The point is that when "the system" is too uncaring, these are the kinds of consequences. A false positive from a mediocre field test caused this woman no end of grief. The takeaway is that when we, as engineers, design systems, we have to remember edge cases like these, we need to remember the person.

When your automated spam detection system flags an account, are you going to outright lock/delete it with extreme prejudice, or are you going to allow the account owner some recourse, and a chance to explain themselves to a real human?

I think this article highlights some huge problems with systems that have too much confidence in their tests / checks. Definitely a useful story for all of us to know.

> ... when we, as engineers, design systems, we have to remember edge cases like these, we need to remember the person.

Well said.

I'll only add that this concern needs to extend all the way back to the initial decision to start designing a system. Technology can have a large impact on people simply by existing; it's worth taking the time to consider what that impact will be and how it will affect people, even the edge cases.

This is becoming increasingly important as the effects of technology start to reverberate through the foundations of society. This makes the popular attitude of only considering the technology increasingly irresponsible; there is "No Neutral Ground in a Burning World"[1].

[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/30C3_-_5491_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201312272...

I'm willing to bet that the hospital didn't even provide that information.

Drug tests are not a "magical black box", there's a process that goes on. And they aren't always right. They usually first start off with immunoassay test on the urine which attempts to measure substances in urine through the use of antibodies. These are "okay" tests -- not bad per se, but they are definitely subject to a wide variety of false positives (http://jat.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/7/387.full). The reported false positive rate I can Google is all over the map, but I've seen articles suggesting as high as 10% (http://www.webmd.com/news/20100528/drug-tests-often-trigger-...).

Drug testing uses these first because they are quick and relatively cheap. The gold standard, however, is GCMS testing. Very accurate, but expensive and time consuming. I assume that's the test performed in the article that took three weeks to resolve the false positive to the negative.

Assuming the story as reported is true, I'm a little bit peeved that there was a de facto assumption by the nurses that the test was correct. The meth / amphetamine test in particular seems to be one of the more problematic immunoassays in the literature in that it false-positives with all sorts of prescriptions, along with some non-prescription drugs (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/726897_2). 90% correct is not correct enough in my opinion when it comes to messing with people's children by threatening CPS.

> What the hell.

If just reading about it frustrates you this much, imagine how the mother must have felt.

Ring ring, hello, so you're not on drugs after all, have a nice day, bye.

This is how the system apologizes, and it's not humane.

And no, throwing lawyers at the problem is not a solution.

Hah.

One day I got a call at work from an ex. "What's up?" "You need to come home, we need to talk."

I duly do.

"So I went to the doctor earlier today. Had an issue. They swabbed me and told me I have an STD. So they did a full STD and blood test, we'll see how that goes. In the mean time, who did you cheat on me with?"

"Uh, nobody."

Back and forth, arguing etc. Me insisting I'll go get tested.

Doctor rings back the next day. "Looking again under the scope, not an STD, just a yeast infection."

Relationship relief.

A month later, call from the clinic: "So about this bill for $290 for a full workup and testing, can you pay that today."

No. Not a chance. You not only misread a test, you gave my girlfriend factually inaccurate information that you -knew- was going to be controversial, and on the strength of that told her "if it wasn't you, you really need to get fully tested if you don't know where he's been".

And then send me the bill? No.

No, it isn't a solution. It's also telling that hospital shootings and other violence are on the rise. When hospitals foster an adversarial relationship with their patients they shouldn't be at all surprised that this is what happens.

Then again, this is par for the course in the drug war.

What more do you want? A gift basket?

I think it was the inhaler. Google reveals it can cause a mix up.

I added the link on the root level.

The hospital test was not that accurate. A more accurate test took 2 weeks, came back negative.

It's most likely the inhaler but how is she supposed to know exactly what caused the hospital tests to fail? She's not a technician.

"Accurate" is too broad a term. The hospital test was likely very accurate, it was just optimized for sensitivity (being sure to catch it if it's there, at the expense of false positives), rather than specificity (being able to have a high degree of confidence that a positive test is true, at the expense of a higher false negative rate).

It is _very_ common in medicine to use a very sensitive test to screen for conditions, and then cross check any positives with a more specific test (which is what should have been done in this case, prior to taking any action).

They should have had the social worker come and explain things to her (false positives happen, the send away test is far more accurate, we aren't going to come and take your baby)

Right? What a weirdly unsatisfying ending. Did they sue the hospital for not knowing enough about medicine that her inhaler could cause this?

That's the point exactly. What a weirdly unsatisfying ending. All this emotional trauma over a false positive.

It also really underscores an extremely critical question with society: When the system is inflexible, and uncaring, what recourse do you have when it fails you? Imagine the hopelessness, the bleak future, of the world turning its back on you because of a mistake. I can only imagine this is what it's like to be falsely convicted of a crime... or failing a drug test that you shouldn't have failed.

I think there's even a lesson for us technical folks here: When the systems we design are too automated, and too rigid, we are removing all compassion. Now if the system is "perfect" there's no problem, but even Google hasn't been able to completely perfect their systems. People still become the victim of false DMCA takedowns, etc.

I guess at the end of the day, the moral is to "Remember the person."

Here's the thing, it isn't just automated systems. Large institutions do the same thing. People have less and less of the full picture and act more and more as a component of the system.

In this case it appears that the social worker had enough of the full picture to inject some measure of sanity, but I really wonder if the nurses understood the statistics related to the tests well enough to treat her like shit over them.

I know nothing about medical law, but I hope they can do something like this. They essentially treated her like a criminal and clearly caused a lot of emotional damage.

True, but they didn't do anything to her. They ADVISED her not to breastfeed, and noted when she went AMA (against medical advice), but let her do so.

Arguably, the only thing they did without consent was drug test the child, but I bet they consented. She consented to her own drug tests. All of them.

This story is from real life, not Hollywood. Unsatisfying, frustrating, and horrifically unjust outcomes are common in real life.

> Did they sue the hospital for not knowing enough about medicine that her inhaler could cause this

murica!!

You know what else causes a positive test? Using meth. They got a positive, they followed up with further testing to clarify.

Why would they sue? There was no damage done.

You're joking.

No I'm not. Honestly I'm astonished that people are calling for a lawsuit. What happened? Some nurses gave her a disapproving look? Someone made an appointment with cps that was later cancelled? So what? I'd be more sympathetic if CPS actually took the child away, but they didn't. The hospital clearly acted unprofessionally, but that is hardly grounds for a lawsuit.

Are you making an argument that distress and psychological harm aren't a form of "damage"? They added some fairly traumatic experiences to an already stressful time in these peoples' lives without sufficient cause. You're trying to say that the little things (glances, the temporary threat of CPS taking away the newborn, being told more than once not to breastfeed your child, being described as a "combative patient" just for doing what's best for the child) don't add up to a big thing. I don't think you understand the stresses involved in this situation.

Maybe a lawsuit is going too far, especially if this incident isn't in some permanent CPS record. But if it is, the hospital has them set up for some serious problems down the road.

The mother and child possibly had to stay longer in hospital while extra checks were being done. In the US that has some financial implication.

From the sounds of it, the reason people are calling for a lawsuit is the typical War On Drugs approach: Without reasonable suspicion, they did a field test (known to be faulty). Without probable cause or any corroborating evidence, they falsely accused her of a crime. They then treated her as guilty until proven innocent (which violates our social standards of morality). And they topped it off by threatening violence in the form of kidnapping her newborn baby.

That's quite a bit more than merely unprofessional. Something like a stray sarcastic comment or slightly distasteful joke might be unprofessional. This sort of behavior, on the other hand, quite possibly should be illegal and should have consequences.

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10883282

This has nothing to do with the war on drugs. She wasn't drug tested by a police officer going door-to-door in the hospital. The hospital administered a medical test to determine risks that the newborn would potentially face. You don't need probable cause to administer a medical test. Furthermore, i bet the mother could have refused the drug test with no consequences.

Nonsense. Do you think if instead she had happened to test positive for strep throat, the results would have been the same? It is absolutely about the war on drugs mentality.

1. High levels of cortisol (stress hormone) are known to affect development. 2. Mother-child bonding is facilitated by the oxytocin rush at delivery and was probably disrupted by the aggressive response of the "care" providers. 3. A cascade of hormonal shifts at delivery probably make women much more susceptible to emotional stressors. 4. Care providers that cannot do math (e.g., understand a false positive rate or mg per kg of a drug) should be held liable so that the system can correct. 5. Class action lawsuits are often successful with much less clarity of harm.

They were going to prevent her from breastfeeding.