‘Kermit the killer’:

doctor stands accused of

eight murders in

‘house of horrors’

January 20, 2011 – 4:35PM

The “house of horrors”… The Women’s Medical Society in Philadelphia, where Dr Kermit Gosnell allegedly made millions from abortions. Photo: AP

A US doctor, who gave abortions to minorities, immigrants and poor women in a “house of horrors” clinic, has been charged with eight counts of murder over the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors say.

Dr Kermit Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said.

State regulators ignored complaints about him and failed to inspect his clinic since 1993, but no charges were warranted against them given time limits and existing law, District Attorney Seth Williams said. 

Nine of Gosnell’s employees were also charged.

Gosnell “induced labour, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord”, Williams said.

Patients were subjected to squalid and barbaric conditions at Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society, where Gosnell performed dozens of abortions a day, prosecutors said. He mostly worked overnight hours after his untrained staff administered drugs to induce labour during the day, they said.

Early last year, authorities went to investigate drug-related complaints at the clinic and stumbled on what Williams called a “house of horrors”.

Bags and bottles holding aborted foetuses “were scattered throughout the building,” Williams said. “There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose.”

The clinic was shut down and Gosnell’s medical licence was suspended after the raid.

Gosnell and four workers were charged with murder, while five others were charged with controlled drug violations and other crimes. None of the employees had any medical training, and one, a high school student, performed intravenous anaesthesia with potentially lethal narcotics, Williams said.

All 10 defendants were taken into custody, authorities said.

Two listed numbers for Gosnell in Philadelphia have been disconnected. Defence lawyer William J. Brennan, who represented Gosnell during the investigation, noted that the doctor served patients in a low-income city neighbourhood for decades.

“Obviously, these allegations are very, very serious,” Brennan said.

The grand jury said the woman who died was a patient who came to Gosnell’s clinic for an abortion and died of cardiac arrest because she was given too much Demerol. Gosnell wasn’t at the clinic at the time, but directed his staff to administer the drug to keep the woman, a healthy 41-year-old, sedated until he arrived, prosecutors said.

Gosnell has been named in at least 46 malpractice suits, including one over the death of a 22-year-old mother who died of sepsis and a perforated uterus in 2000. Many others also involve perforated uteruses. Gosnell sometimes sewed up the injury without telling women their uteruses had been perforated, prosecutors said.

Gosnell charged $325 for first-trimester abortions and $1600 to $3000 for abortions up to 30 weeks. Abortions are legal up to 24 weeks gestation in Pennsylvania, although most doctors won’t perform them after 20 weeks, prosecutors said.

Some women came from across the mid-Atlantic for the illegal late-term abortions, authorities said. White women from the suburbs were ushered into a separate, slightly cleaner area because Gosnell believed they were more likely to file complaints, Williams said.

“People knew near and far that if you needed a late-term abortion you could go see Dr Gosnell,” Williams said.

Few if any of the sedated women knew their babies were born alive and then killed, prosecutors said. Many were first-time mothers who were told they were 24 weeks pregnant, even if they were further along, authorities said.

Gosnell got his medical degree from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and is board certified in family practice. He started, but did not finish, a residency in obstetrics-gynaecologic, authorities said.

“He does not know how to do an abortion. He’s not board certified,” Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore said. “Once he got them there, he saw dollar signs and did abortions that other people wouldn’t do.”

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

New pump made for infant heart surgery

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (UPI) — U.S. researchers say they’ve developed a new heart pump that could help infants born with congenital heart defects survive necessary surgeries.

Scientists at Purdue University have created a “viscous impeller pump” for children born with univentricular circulation, a congenital heart disease that is the leading cause of death from birth defects in the first year of a child’s life, a university release said Tuesday.

The normal human heart contains two pumping chambers, called ventricles.

One circulates oxygenated blood throughout the body, while the other less-powerful ventricle circulates deoxygenated blood to the lungs.

Children born with univentricular circulation have only one functioning ventricle but can survive if blood vessels in the heart are restructured in a series of open-heart surgeries.

At least 30 percent of babies do not survive the surgeries, called the Fontan procedures.

To improve the survival rate, Purdue engineers and researchers developed the new mechanical pump to assist the heart during surgeries.

“A big advantage of this pump is that it gets delivered through the skin with a catheter without open heart surgery,” Steven Frankel, a Purdue University professor of mechanical engineering, said.

“It is designed to be in the body for two weeks at most, almost like a disposable item,” Frankel said.

The researchers have received a $2.1 million, four-year grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to continue developing the heart pump, Purdue said.

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

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Unequal access drives fertility tourism, experts say

LONDON, Sep. 14, 2010 (Reuters) — Patients who cross borders in search of cheaper, more available fertility treatment can now choose from more than 100 countries but may be putting themselves and their babies at risk, experts said Tuesday.

Nurses display quadruplet baby girls born by caesarean section at Pringadi hospital in Medan, North Sumatra September 29, 2009. REUTERS/Stringer

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The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) and the International Federation of Fertility Societies (IFFS) said a survey of reproductive services showed wide disparities between laws and practice in many countries. As a result, patients returning home may face legal or medical problems.

“Although in principle the care of foreign and local patients should essentially be the same and fit the best possible standards, there is evidence that it is not always so,” ESHRE’s Francoise Shenfield told reporters at a briefing.

A survey of 105 countries by the IFFS found that cultural, religious and social differences in attitudes to fertility treatments such as using donated eggs, sperm or embryos mean there are wide variations in the number of clinics that offer treatment, and the services they provide.

In vitro fertilization (IVF) involves removing eggs from a woman’s ovaries and combining them with sperm in a lab. The strongest embryos are then implanted into a woman’s womb. In theory, the eggs, sperm and embryos can all be donated.

The IFFS survey found there are over 500 fertility clinics in India and about 615 in Japan, but only 66 in Britain, 120 in Germany, 200 in Spain and around 360 in Italy.

IFFS education director Ian Cooke said discrepancies in access prompted patients to travel abroad for treatment, but could leave them in medical, financial or legal difficulties.

LEGAL DIFFERENCES

One major problem is the rules on the maximum number of embryos that can be transferred to a woman’s womb after IVF.

In Britain and Scandinavia only one or two are allowed, but other countries have higher limits or none at all — a factor that can increase the number of multiple pregnancies that can pose risks for both mothers and babies.

Freezing embryos is banned in Germany, Italy and Croatia, but freezing eggs before they are fertilized is allowed. In Britain the removal of donors’ anonymity has led to a severe shortage in donated sperm.

Sperm and egg donation is banned completely in many Islamic countries, and in France lesbians are not allowed access to donated sperm. Turkey has recently banned anyone going abroad to receive donated sperm or eggs — a law which the experts said was almost completely unenforceable.

“If a woman goes on holiday and comes back pregnant, who is to tell exactly how or when she got pregnant?” said Shenfield.

Both IFFS and ESHRE support the rights of patients to travel to receive fertility treatment, but said in a joint statement that “ideally, this should take place in their home country.”

They urged national health authorities to try to harmonize standards to increase the safety of patients and offer equal treatment for all those who want it.

“The variation in international laws relating to infertility treatment is one of the reasons that cause couples to seek cross-border treatment,” said Cooke. “Whilst this is unavoidable we call for international standards to ensure these patients receive consistent advice and safe treatment.”

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Mother get flu shots and babies reap benefits

CHICAGO, Oct. 4, 2010 (Reuters) — Newborn babies whose mothers got a flu shot while pregnant are less likely to get the flu or to be admitted to the hospital with a respiratory illness in the first six months of life, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

During most flu seasons, babies under six months tend to have fewer cases of flu-like illnesses than those who are 6 to 12 months old, most likely because they are protected by their mothers’ natural antibodies.

But in severe flu seasons, such as the 2009 swine flu pandemic, these youngest children, who are too young to get flu shots themselves, are more likely to be hospitalized and die from flu than older babies.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has for years recommended that pregnant women be vaccinated against seasonal flu, but the study adds to other research showing that newborn babies benefit, too.

Researcher Angelia Eick, formerly of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and now of the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, wanted to see if giving pregnant women flu shots could increase protection for babies under 6 months old.

Eick and colleagues studied children on Navajo and White Mountain Apache Indian reservations. In these communities, children are more prone to severe respiratory infections than those in the general population.

The team studied 1,160 mother-infant pairs over three flu seasons. The mothers and babies gave blood samples before and after the flu season and they were monitored for flu symptoms.

In the flu season following the child’s birth, babies whose mother had been vaccinated were 41 percent less likely to have a lab-confirmed flu infection and 39 percent less likely to be hospitalized for a flu-like illness.

They also found babies whose mothers had been vaccinated had higher levels of flu antibodies at birth and at 2 to 3 months of age compared with babies whose mothers did not get a flu shot.

“Although influenza vaccination is recommended for pregnant women to reduce their risk of influenza complications, these findings provide support for the added benefit of protecting infants from influenza virus infection up to six months,” Eick and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The findings are particularly relevant with the 2009 H1N1 flu virus, which hit pregnant women and young babies especially hard, the team wrote.

Current flu vaccines protect against the H1N1 virus as well as two other strains of the flu.

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Simple blood test could examine fetus

ROME (UPI) — A simple non-invasive blood test could replace invasive diagnostic techniques in early pregnancy, Dutch researchers say.

Researchers at the Maastricht University Medical Centre in the Netherlands say they are developing a simple blood test capable of accurately detecting chromosomal abnormalities in a developing fetus responsible for Down syndrome and other conditions, a university release said Tuesday.

Currently, the only way to make such determinations is through amniocentesis or other invasive techniques that carry the risk of triggering miscarriages, the release said.

Dr. Suzanna Frints, a clinical geneticist at Maastricht, says molecular genetic probes can detect DNA belonging to the fetus in blood samples taken from a pregnant woman.

The simple blood test could replace current diagnostic procedures, said Frints, who is scheduled to address the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Rome Tuesday.

“It is inexpensive compared to the costs of invasive prenatal diagnosis, and could easily be implemented at low cost, between 30-150 Euros ($35-$180) per kit per person, with a small apparatus in every hospital in the world,” Frints said. “Blood samples can be taken during routine antenatal visits.”

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

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Antidepressants, miscarriages linked

MONTREAL (UPI) — Canadian researchers say the risk of miscarriages is 68 percent higher in women who took antidepressants during pregnancy.

Researchers from the University of Montreal said they recommend doctors discuss with their patients the risks and benefits of antidepressant therapy during pregnancy.

The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, involved 5,124 women who were part of a large population-based group of pregnant women who had clinically verified miscarriages and a large sample of women from the same registry who did not have a miscarriage.

Of those who miscarried, 284, or 5.5 percent, had taken antidepressants during pregnancy.

Antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors — especially paroxetine and also venlafaxine — were associated with increased risk of miscarriage as were higher daily doses of either antidepressant. A combination of different antidepressants doubled the risk of miscarriages.

“These results, which suggest an overall class effect of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, are highly robust given the large number of users studied,” Dr. Anick Berard, the study’s senior author, said in a statement.

However, stopping antidepressant medication can result in a depressive relapse that can put mother and baby at risk, Bernard added.

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

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Study: Children of lesbians may do better

SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) — Children of lesbian-mother families demonstrate healthy psychological adjustment; in fact, they score higher than their peers, U.S. researchers say.

Study leader Dr. Nanette Gartrell of the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues say from 1986 to 1992, 154 prospective lesbian mothers volunteered for the study designed to follow planned lesbian families from the child’s conception until they were adults.

Information was obtained via interviews and questionnaires by 78 children when they were age 10 and 17 as well as Child Behavior Checklists that were completed by their mothers.

The study, published online ahead of print in the July issue of the journal Pediatrics, found the 17-year-olds were rated significantly higher in social, academic and total competence compared with their counterparts raised by heterosexual parents.

In addition, the study found the sons and daughters of lesbian mothers scored significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, and aggressive and externalizing problem behavior compared with children of traditional families using Achenbach’s normative sample of American youth.

Within the study sample, no differences were found among the teens whose mothers were still together and those whose mothers had separated, the study says.

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha