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.