The Danger of blindly accepting ‘science as fact’ Motherisk is a Canadian tragedy, we must never repeat.
Motherisk, a once-respected lab inside the Hospital for Sick Children, performed tests for more than 100 child welfare providers in five provinces, an investigation reveals. For some families, the fallout is a tragedy.
October 19, 2017
It was a trusted lab inside the country’s premier children’s hospital.
Motherisk raked in millions performing hair-strand drug and alcohol tests on at least across Canada.
The tests were discredited, but not before they were used in at least and
Now, many of those cases are under review.
So far, the Ontario review has identified where Motherisk’s tests had a significant impact on decisions to remove children from their families.
Many of those decisions can’t be undone.
In British Columbia, a mother is desperate to convince the children she lost years ago that she didn’t choose drugs over them.
In Nova Scotia, a 7-year-old girl prays for her brother, who was adopted into another family.
And in Ontario, a mother whose daughters were taken shortly after they were born is waiting for a reunion that may never come.
For more than two decades, in thousands of cases across Canada, flawed drug and alcohol testing from the Hospital for Sick Children’s Motherisk lab influenced high-stakes battles over whether to remove children from their families.
Child welfare agencies in five provinces paid for Motherisk’s hair-strand tests, believing the results were hard evidence of substance abuse.
In fact, Motherisk’s results were faulty opinions, devised by scientists who operated without oversight or forensic training yet testified as experts in family and criminal courts as far afield as Colorado. The sterling reputation of Sick Kids and the promise of a simple, concrete answer in difficult cases obscured the warning signs that were there from the earliest days.
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