1312: Andrea Dunlop | How Social Media Fuels Medical Child Abuse

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25:29Actually, probably more like five, but five-minute networking was taken. Many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. The course is free of shenanigans and free of charge of any kind at sixminutenetworking.com. Now, back to Andrea Dunlop. I feel bad for people who actually have sick kids because now I assume there's a thing at a hospital where staff is like, can we call the social worker and just verify this person is not totally insane? I guess that's why people get away with it because a nurse doesn't want to be like, hey, I want to make sure that this isn't a bunch of bullshit.

26:03Of course you believe the woman that comes in with a blue baby and you're like feeling bad for her. I'm a skeptic, right? But my first thought is not, what did you do to your kid? It's like, oh, my God, this is terrible. You must be torn apart by this. And even if it does happen a few times, I just assume something is wrong with the kid. I don't assume you're a freaking psychopath that's abusing your own kid and almost killing them so that you can get some attention. That's not my go-to. No one should. No one should assume that this is what's happening. But especially anyone who works with children, I mean, especially in a medical setting, but teachers, other parents, like people who are around children should be aware of this abuse because it's one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it.

26:42And I will say like the pattern is very dramatic. It is not this sort of subtle gray area thing. It's quite obvious once you have all the information in front of you what is happening. It is really a challenge for doctors because, of course, pediatric doctors are completely dependent on parents to give them a faithful history. And, you know, does that mean they're going to be 100 percent of the time and they might say, oh, the kid had 102 fever when they really had 101. But that parents think like that sort of gray area of exaggeration that exists for all things. The doctor asks you, how many drinks do you have a week?

27:15And you say two instead of five. Like doctors understand that. Two normally, but that's on an average. You have to stretch it out three months because I had 15 last weekend. But we don't count that, right? Right. And so it's like doctors understand that there's like a normal level of exaggeration. And this abuse is so far beyond that. And it really makes doctors jobs difficult. And then it's really horrible. And pediatric doctors in particular, these are some of the most lovely people you'll ever meet in your life. These are not cops who go into everything going, I'm suspicious of everything you're telling me right now.

27:49They're going into the opposite. Like, I'm just here to help. I got into this profession to help kids versus a detective who's like, I'm looking for inconsistencies in your story because I don't trust you since you're standing in front of me. Exactly. And it's a totally different job. Pediatric doctors are there because they love kids and they trust parents. That relationship with the parents is really important to them to be able to do their job and help that kid. So that's what they're always looking to do. And so when a parent misuses that trust and uses them to harm their child, the doctor is the weapon in these cases.

28:19And so that is a horrible revelation. And some doctors will do whatever mental gymnastics possible to not recognize that they've been used in that way. Right. I can sympathize with that, though. Learning that you have been a pivotal part of a child's medical abuse would not be a comfortable realization to have. Oh, horrific. The thing about this abuse and everyone that gets pulled into it, because there usually is quite a blast zone. So you've got the family members, the non-offending spouse, or the collaborating spouse in some cases, unfortunately. the other family members, the community members, the church members that donated money and the people who brought casseroles and the doctors, everyone that gets pulled into this is it really does demolish your ability to trust both other people and your own instincts.

29:07And that's really part of the long-term psychological damage. And doctors are included in that. To find out that you've been used to do unnecessary surgeries on a child, that you've made a child suffer, not by any fault of your own, because of course, many doctors in these cases are not at fault. They are trusting what a parent is saying and the parent is lying to them. But of course, that doesn't make it any better when you've learned that you've done that. You mentioned the complicit or maybe ignorant spouse. What are the husbands doing? And it's usually the husband, right? He's not directly involved.

29:38I guess it seems like it would be really easy for a busy dad or a dad who's at work all the time or something like that. I leave my kids in charge of my wife. They're the mother of my children. So I probably wouldn't be like, oh, the doctor said he has this. That's probably not true. I'd be like, oh, my gosh. But the guilt involved with leaving your child to be tortured by the mother and just not knowing for years, that guilt must be crazy intense. You really have a spectrum with the partners. Again, much of the partners in abusive head trauma cases where that's usually a woman. And you get everything from someone who acts in a very protective manner.

30:14And the minute that they have the information that they need to put it together, the minute that compelling evidence has been placed in front of them, they will do everything they can to protect their child. You have everything from that spectrum to people that are completely checked out. And this is not terribly uncommon with the gender dynamics of marriage and parenthood in our culture. You see these dynamics a lot in these specific situations where, you know, maybe you have a dad who's in the military or they travel a lot for work. So maybe there's a reason that they're not as involved in the day to day or they're just completely checked out for their own reasons.

30:49And they go, oh, the kids are her thing. And so they don't know for a long time. And then you get these other situations, which we've had a couple on the show where the dad is enabling to the point where I consider them a collaborator. I have to say there's another one that we didn't really touch on. But personally, I don't know if I would want to even admit to the investigator that I let this go under my nose because I was tired or I was busy working or I didn't know my wife was abusing our kids or I was on the road a lot. this is weird that I'm saying this, but I'm not in the situation, but it's like I would almost pretend I was more involved with my kids' lives than I actually was because I'd be embarrassed and ashamed to admit that I didn't know my wife was actually a psycho child abuser who was abusing our kids.

31:32I would almost fudge like, oh, I took him to the doctor last week, I think. Oh, that was last year. My bad. I don't know. I feel an element of shame that might cause me to actually be harmful to whatever investigation was going on, if I'm really honest with myself. Yeah, and that's extremely common. You'll talk to doctors. And again, these are kids that are going to the doctor all the time. So it's not, oh, my wife took them to the pediatrician for their annual last year, and then I took them this year. And those two visits were like months or a year apart, right? They're going to the doctor all the time.

32:05They're going to different specialists. They're in the hospital all the time. So when the police are interviewing the doctors and they say, hey, what's going on with dad? Like, how much of your interaction? And they're like, oh, when he's here, he doesn't talk. He's usually not here. We don't see him barely at all. It's all Ben, the mom. And then they interview the dad. And it's exactly what you say. They're like, oh, well, I, you know, I am also involved and I also take them to their appointments. And I take notes on everything. My wife actually writes the notes, but I'm there. I just I'm looking at my phone.

32:32And I think, again, this is like a gendered thing that plays into this abuse is just the idea that. It's something that's very human and that I really empathize with. But I think there's also this idea of I let this happen under my roof. And I think there's a lot of guilt and there's also a lot of shame when you feel like someone has fooled you. Because if you feel like your spouse has also completely manipulated and fooled you, people don't love to admit that they bought into something that wasn't real. That's a very bad feeling. One thing I noticed from your show and from researching this a little bit on my own is that often these abusers, they start with like a fake miscarriage or even a fake pregnancy and then a fake miscarriage and then a real pregnancy.

33:18And I wondered, is that just because pregnant women are up on a pedestal? You treat them differently and then you treat them special because they're tired and their back hurts. You treat them really well and you throw a party for them. And then when they lose their child, everyone's like, oh, my God, like it's really serious. And everyone rallies around you. That's like the earliest these kinds of people can get the type of attention that they seem to be looking for is before the child is born. That's right. And oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes Munchausen by proxy behavior, which is when you are abusing someone else to get your needs met, so either a child or a vulnerable adult, is preceded by Munchausen behavior, which is when people are doing it to themselves.

33:59So a lot of cases that we look at, the mother before they ever had actual children had, as you said, fake pregnancies, fake miscarriages, or at least dubious ones. And then oftentimes a long history of their own medical oddities, crises that were not real. And that was the case in my family. My sister had a fake twin pregnancy that she dramatically lost that we later learned almost certainly she was never pregnant at all. And if she ever was, she certainly didn't lose it six months in, as she claimed. But before that, there was a history of she had a back surgery that looks pretty questionable in the rear view.

34:37She had a knee surgery where they went in, the doctors went in, they couldn't find anything wrong. And she was complaining about pain, etc. She had an instance where she was losing her hair as a teenager and it turned out she was shaving her head. And so she had this pretty like long history of weird medical stuff that we just didn't really have context for at the time that preceded this. That's pretty common. There was the case Hope Ybarra, which was the first case we covered on the show. Hopes was very dramatic. Hope Ybarra had an eight year long alleged bone cancer that she had two remissions from and two huge remission parties.

35:09And that just didn't turn out to be real at all. And that's sort of what tipped her family off to what was happening. These people abuse themselves first sometimes then. Yeah. Oh, that's pretty common. And if it's not medical abuse, like we saw in the Lisa McDaniel case, which was the one that we covered last season, she didn't have a history so much of medical stuff, but they do have a history of lying. So it will be these elaborate stories in which they are always the victim. So you see fake robberies, fake arson, or them causing arson and saying they were the victim of it. I've never seen a case where there wasn't a pretty significant history of deception that is outside of the normal behavioral range.

35:51I'm guessing it's not a crime to lie to doctors and hospital staff about your kid's health. I don't know what that crime could even possibly be. So it's not a crime. And there is some legislation in Texas that they've been trying to get passed in the current climate. it is hard to imagine that making much progress because there are people who are very against any such laws, specifically people who are very strongly anti-vaccine and want to preserve their ability to not disclose the fact that they have not vaccinated their children, for example. And obviously, it's something that a law that would have to be carefully written.

36:31But what I want people to understand about these cases is we are not talking about subtle things. We are not talking about a parent saying they vomited three or four times when they vomited twice. They're not saying, you know, a fever was a point higher than it was. These are dramatic saying that your child tested positive for cancer when they didn't. It's blatant lies. It's over a period of time. This is not an easy crime to even detect, let alone prosecute. So I think right now we have no laws against Munchausen by proxy abuse. And so when people are criminally prosecuted, which is extremely rare, they are prosecuted under laws that are injury to a child or aggravated child abuse, depending on the state and the statute, where they essentially have to prove some physical harm.

37:24The crime then is not the abuse itself. It's that they took blood out of their child and caused anemia or they put feces in the tube like on video. Yeah, they poisoned their child. They suffocated their child. It has to be some pretty extreme physical intervention. And even more than laws because child abuse, how we handle it in this country, there's sort of these two tracks, right, where you're looking at the child welfare system, which is social workers and dependency and family court and that kind of thing. And there's only a couple of states that even have this as a designation. So what frequently happens when CPS is investigating these cases is they put it under medical neglect, which is not the same thing at all.

38:00And then someone who doesn't have any idea what this abuse is, looks at it and goes, you're not medically neglecting this child. They're taking them to the doctor all the time. They're here all the time. Yeah, exactly. We don't have a lot of sort of official recognition of this abuse on any level. It's also just got to be so hard to call bullshit on somebody who is pregnant and then they say they get mugged and then they say they're getting stalked and their house gets broken into supposedly and their car gets vandalized and people feel bad for you. It takes a real skeptical SOB like me to go like, okay, bro, this is getting a little ridiculous.

38:29You're laying it on a little bit thick over here. There was an example in your show where I think it was like the husband of the sister and was like, how could a baby be fine one day, come home from the hospital and the next day they're so sick that they have to go back. Could your sister be doing something? And the wife was like, don't you ever say anything like that. Don't you ever say anything. And then later Later on, she's and I was wrong and she was totally abusing the kid. And it's like she felt really bad about it. And the husband, I'm sure, also was like feeling pretty bad that he accused his sister-in-law of abusing the kid and had his wife react like that.

39:00But it's like somebody's got to say something. But you don't want to, right? You don't want to be the guy who's like, I don't know. That's all a little sus. Who has that type of bad luck? What are the odds your sister's kid has this like one in a 10 million neurological disease and doesn't show all the symptoms? That's a little weird. What do you think? Yeah, so the situation you're talking about is with our last season's case. And that was Sabrina, who is the younger sister of the perpetrator, which is obviously that's a role I'm familiar with. And I can tell you that when the perpetrator is someone that you love, impossible to overstate how terrible it feels to come to the realization that they could be harming their child.

39:37and to be the person who confronts it, who says something, who reports it, is so psychologically and emotionally difficult that many people are not willing to do it. Many people will concoct, unfortunately this has been the case with my brother-in-law and his family, I think they will concoct any sort of conspiratorial world to avoid looking at what's in front of them. And that's just humans. That's just whether or not someone has the emotional courage and whether they've been given the information. I mean, I will say, you know, even with Sabrina in that case, once she was shown the video of her sister doing it, she recognized what was happening.

40:21And some people don't. Some people can be shown something like video evidence and they will still explain it away. And they're putting their own comfort above the safety of the children. And I think like it is hard because you're talking about a mom who's saying that she has a sick child, they're exploiting probably the most sympathetic figure anyone could think of. Because who is more sympathetic than a sick child and a parent of a sick child, if you just think about that? That's something that we're all very conditioned to respond to, and that's what they're exploiting. And I had a wonderful gal on the show, Chalice, who was very close friends with the perpetrator, Sophie Hartman, that we covered in season five, found the show while we were reporting on it, reached out to us and she described kind of her process of coming around on it.

41:07And she said she'd been in Sophie's life through this entire investigation and gone to court with her and defended her to everyone she knew. She described it as when Sophie was her focus, when the perpetrator was her focus, she could believe all of it. The doctors are out to get her. She just has everyone's got her wrong. You know, they just don't understand her kid's unique health issue. And she said, but once the children came into focus, then she couldn't believe any of it anymore. And she actually looked at what the children were being put through. And so I think that's what everyone in the situation needs to do.

41:39Think about what the child is actually experiencing here. When CPS takes the kids away, which I know is rare, but like also happens, CPS usually, don't they place the kids with family? Which that seems dangerous to me because of access. Like these people are so manipulative. They pulled the wool over so many professional and family eyes. And then it's like, all right, that's it. We're taking your kids away and giving them to grandma and grandpa. And it's like, OK, she can come over every day and see them. So what is the functional difference here? Yeah, that is extremely common. That's what happened in my family.

42:13And this was during the second investigation into my sister for her second child. And they were placed with family members who were not protective and did not believe that my sister was abusing her kids. They told the police, the grandfather on that side told the police, this is a witch hunt, just like last time. So it really couldn't have been more clear that they were not going to protect the kids from Megan. And indeed, what came out was they were letting Megan spend 11 hours a day at the house, even though she was supposed to be separated from them. She was feeding them. She was changing their diaper.

42:41Just was letting her have full unfettered access to them. And yeah, I mean, that really messes with an investigation because then you don't have a clean separation test. And one of the best practices is to separate the child and see, hey, do all these issues around feeding and symptoms that the mom is saying happen? Do they all disappear when or get remarkably better really quickly when the mom is separated? And if that's the case, then you have a pretty clear common denominator. And also if that's not the case, right? I mean, I've interviewed many professionals who have a lot of experience with this and they've talked about cases where there was a suspicion.

43:14There was one B. Yorker who's a former psychiatric nurse. One of her first cases was a case where a child was having this symptom where he was bleeding from his ears and he had a sibling that had died previously. And so there were some red flags about abuse. They separated him from the mom temporarily and the child's symptoms persist. So right away, they knew that the mom was not the cause of it. And he did turn out to be one of these rare cases where he had some rare genetic disorder that had killed his sibling. And so that was a case where then they were very quickly reunited and that suspicion was gone.

43:44If your biggest red flag is impulse buying stuff you might not totally need, you're doing great. Let's refine the habit. We'll be right back.

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46:19I'm happy to surface codes for you. It's that important that you support those who support the show. Now back to Andrea Dunlop. This has got to be so confusing for kids of any age, especially older kids, because the person you trust the most is hurting you. People are gaslighting you from all directions. And the people trying to protect you from your mom are doctors and caseworkers. And it's like they're now the enemy. It's really the upside down for these kids. Yeah, it absolutely is. And I think one of the things that in getting to know adult survivors, you know, one of the things that has really become profoundly obvious to me is just the toll of the psychological damage.

46:58Because when the person you're supposed to trust above all people in the world, I'm really close with my mom, I still trust my mom more than almost anyone, right? Like the person who's supposed to teach you about who is safe in the world is telling you the exact opposite and is telling you only people who side with their abuser are safe people. And anybody who's trying to protect them from their abuser is an evil person who's trying to kidnap them or what have you. And so there is this very intense splitting of anybody who is on to that perpetrator. They will take them out of that doctor's office.

47:32They will remove them. They will separate them from that family member. They will absolutely just immediately excommunicate anyone who is suspicious of them. Do your parents still have contact with your sister then? Because obviously that would mean that. OK, no, because if you're separated from people that don't believe you, but you still talk to your mom, it's hard to be like in between. Right. It's hard to be like, oh, yeah, one of our daughters totally knows and proved on the show that you're doing all this and did a whole thing about it. And our other daughter is abusing our grandkids. There's not like a gray area where you could be OK with both of those things.

48:07And in my family, which I think this is pretty typical, this all happened over 14 years ago. This came to a head in my family, which was after my sister was investigated for her older child. My parents and I, once we recognized what was happening with the help of our family doctor who helped us give a name to it, we were very aligned. Not that we wanted to take her kids away or even wanted her to be punished. I don't think any of us was in that mindset at the time, but just that her child was in danger. And so we were quite aligned on that once we had, again, the information. And because of that, Megan cut us all out of her life.

48:47So that was her decision. to cut us out. And it was very much this, either you get on board with my warped version of reality where this is the hospital's fault and she wanted my parents to help fund a lawsuit against the hospital and they said, no, thank you. It's a very much either you're with me or you're against me. And that's it. You're not seeing your grandchild ever again. It seems like there can't be a cure for this kind of thing, right? I heard on your show, Munchausen by proxy. It's not a delusion. If you're a mother and you have crazy delusions, like you think your baby is Satan and you're trying to poison her, they can get you medication and they can treat you and you're like, oh my God, I'm mentally ill.

49:26I need to stay on these pills. And when you stay on the pills, you're a safe parent again. Like maybe CPS comes just to make sure like everything, but you're like, oh my God, I can't believe I was a totally different person because I was dealing with schizophrenia, whatever it is. But in Munchausen by proxy, this is like a compulsive behavior. It's a recovery model, right? It's like anorexia. There's not like a cure. You can't take a pill and go, oh yeah, you know what? When I take this, I don't feel the need to abuse my kids. Yeah, no, you're quite right. And it is very distinct from parents who are having delusions and who are having something like postpartum psychosis, which is very serious and obviously requires an intervention.

50:01But that's something where you're right. Exactly. As you said, if a parent has the proper support, they absolutely can be a safe parent. And this is why I and many other experts have really leaned away from the idea of describing this as a psychological condition. There is a psychiatric diagnosis that is associated with a factitious disorder imposed on another. It is in the DSM. I really have come to believe that the utility of that psychiatric diagnosis is worse than zero because I think it often creates confusion about this being a mental illness that someone can be treated for. There is a treatment model.

50:37It has been effective in very rare cases. And it begins with a full acknowledgement of the behavior, right? So not what you usually see in cases, which is that the person only acknowledges the behavior in the context of a criminal investigation, and they only acknowledge what they've been caught for. So, for instance, in Lisa's case where she was caught on video doing this, right, you think, how could anyone explain that behavior? She did. And she said, oh, I was so worried. And this is a pretty common framework that perpetrators give when they're backed into a corner. I was so worried that my child was actually sick, but the doctors weren't doing enough that I poisoned them so that they would have these extreme symptoms.

51:22I mean, you can't really make it make rational sense. But unfortunately, this is something where people really want to sympathize with the perpetrator and think, oh, they didn't mean to do this or they're having a bad moment or they were in some kind of mental crisis. And then what happens is they get a therapist and they go to a few sessions of therapy and they're like, well, OK, well, that's fixed. And that's not an adequate intervention. And it often also leaves a lot of room for perpetrators to get their own psychological evaluation and have someone come in and say, oh, no, they tested negative for Munchausen by proxy.

51:54That's absolute nonsense. It's not something that you can psychologically test for. It is a pattern of abuse, and there either is evidence of that abuse or not. The other big headline case, which ended up with a huge judgment in court on the civil side that just got overturned, the Kowalski case, you know, Beata Kowalski had a psychologist. Oh, was that the documentary? The Take Care of Maya case. So this is a case where there is unbelievably extensive evidence of abuse, very severe, very high probability that this would have ended up in a fatality, in my opinion, having read thousands of pages of court documentation and interviewed the doctor.

52:34And they had a psychologist that came in and evaluated, said, oh, no, Bianca Kowalski does not have Munchausen by proxy. And that's not something that you can get a psychological test for. And unless someone is willing to fully account for their behavior and then be in recovery for the rest of their life, that's not a treatable person. So the vast majority of perpetrators are not going to be treatable. And even if someone is in treatment, I tend to believe that there are certain lines that if you cross them with your behavior with children, you are no longer considered a safe person and you should not be around children anymore.

53:09So I think in the cases where someone has suffocated their child, poisoned their child, really put their child's life at risk, I just don't think that's someone who should be alone with children anymore. But they may be able to be treated and have some kind of reckoning for their behavior with their children, have some kind of well-monitored relationship with their children. Again, that's very rare cases. But this isn't something where you send someone to therapy and parenting classes and you leave the children in the house and they're going to be safe. They're absolutely not. I don't know if you can call it this word.

53:36I'm probably misusing it. Recidivism with Munchausen by proxy. Because it's a crime. If they keep doing the crime, that's recidivism. So it's the rate of recidivism has to be astronomical, just given what you've said. As far as I know, I don't think you could ever say 100 percent. But I mean, certainly like I've never seen a case where the behavior is halted. How common is this? Because this is one of those things where it's, oh, my God, it's so rare. There's 10 documented cases per state. And then it's like, or just nobody's investigating and reporting it and writing Munchausen by proxy. They're just writing like seems a little sus in the chart, but it's not like going into a database anywhere.

54:13Yeah, we don't have great data on this. There are people when they, media outlets frequently describe this as much more rare than it actually is. And they give this sort of old statistic that was from a British study that is from a long time ago and didn't use gray methodology. So that's a thing that happens a lot with science writing, unfortunately. There are some more recent studies. There's one from Seattle Children's that put it at about a third the rate of abusive head trauma cases, which is the most common form of child abuse of young children. We think it's a lot more common than what is currently recognized.

54:49There are many barriers to getting good data on it. It's not something that people are going to self-report. Survivors may self-report later. There's one long-term study by my colleague, Dr. Kathy Ayoub, who's been following a number of adult survivors for a long time, but she has not compiled or released that data yet. So I think we may get a better picture as there is more public awareness of it. Part of the problem in a lot of abuse statistics because we don't necessarily catch it doesn't necessarily end up in CPS database or criminal database. Child abuse on the whole, not something that is highly prosecuted.

55:26Most people, unfortunately, just get away with it. And a lot of the data that we have on child abuse as a whole is collected from adult survivors. The barrier to that with Munchausen by proxy abuse is many adult survivors, first of all, don't know who to tell once they realize they are abused survivors and may not realize until they're in their 20s or 30s or beyond that they even were abused survivors. They know there was something going on. They know there was something wrong with their childhood. But the process of discovery can be quite onerous for survivors. What do you do? You're in therapy and then suddenly you go, hey, whoever, add me to the stats for 1996 because that's what was going on.

56:00Where do you sign up for that? What do you do with that? The problem is it seems like doctors, let's say I'm a doctor and I don't know much about this and I look at the stats and I go, oh, Munchausen by proxy is like one in five million. Okay, it's probably not that because I'm looking at the stats that are reported and so it's rare. So I'm like, oh gosh, what are the odds it's that versus actually this weird, rare neurological disorder? They're both equally rare. Well, I guess it's a 50-50 chance. Meanwhile, Munchausen by proxy is 100 times more common, but it's not showing up in the stats. So I look for it less.

56:31Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And I think, unfortunately, that public perception is doubled down on by a lot of media outlets. And the coverage of the Maya Kowalski case, it mentioned in that context, oh, it can't be this because this is so rare. Meanwhile, the mother is claiming in that case that her child has whole body CRPS, which is not a condition that exists. CRPS does exist. She was told by three world class hospitals that her child did not have that, that her child had conversion disorder. And she kept looking for this diagnosis of CRPS until she found a doctor with a all cash ketamine clinic who did give her that diagnosis and prescribed all of these ketamine infusions for her daughters.

57:14If we're talking about probabilities here, it doesn't matter. Like, even if you think Munchausen by proxy is pretty rare, this is such an obvious case of it. So I do think doctors do a lot of that questioning and self-doubt and also just because emotionally it's so uncomfortable. And now you have this added thing of doctors and especially doctors that handle child abuse or really doctors that work in pediatrics are very aware of what happened in the Kowalski case and some of these other lawsuits. So not only are they now pausing to think, could it be this? Because how common is that? It's not an everyday thing, but I think anyone who's working in pediatrics long term is going to see cases.

57:49I think anyone who works as a school nurse for 20 years is going to see cases. And so now they're not only pausing to think, oh, are my instincts leading me wrong? They have to think, too, if I report this, is it going to end with me as the villain of a Netflix film getting constant death threats, harassment, being driven out of my career, etc. Which is not a position we want to put doctors in, I assure you. And there's a lot of press about false allegations of child abuse. And the thing I want to make sure people really understand is that if you are concerned about parents being falsely accused of child abuse, you want as many child abuse pediatricians as possible because the data shows us that they rule out half of the cases they evaluate.

58:37and they are only called in when there's already a suspicion by other doctors of abuse. And so we drive all the child abuse pediatricians out of their job, which is something that a bunch of people are trying to do. You will end up with more families falsely accused of abuse, not less. That's quite interesting. I assume when people want to get a diagnosis for something, they move across state lines. And I notice a lot of these abusers, they move across state lines. They say it's like, oh, there's one special doctor we want to see because he's an expert. But it seems like the real reason is this hospital has me on their radar because they kind of know something's up.

59:09And that caseworker who's assigned to me from this area, they know something is up. And the police and EMS is like, hey, again? So we kind of need a clean slate. I've got a better plan now to get caught later than I did this time. Here's a mistake I made in San Jose. Let me move to SoCal and try it down there. Something like that. It seems like that's what's happening. 100 percent you're correct. Yeah. And most of the major cases that I've looked at have crossed state lines in some capacity. And, you know, it's really for all those reasons that you've said, I think, again, rather than looking at these perpetrators as, oh, this lady has this weird psychological condition that's making her do these things.

59:48They are abusers, they're opportunists and they're grifters. For example, in our season six case, which was one that moved dramatically across state lines. And usually it's almost always the same reason, right? Oh, my child has this rare thing and there's this one special doctor that we have to go and see. The reality that came to light about that move, of course, was she was convicted of abusing her middle child. And so that had happened in the area of Georgia where she lived. So that hospital was on to her. The local DFACS, which is their CPS, was on to her and they investigated originally when her son was born.

1:00:24They didn't end up doing anything. But this was a case where people were on to her and also in the community. She lived in this small town, Hazelhurst, Georgia. She had done a whole bunch of scammy fundraising when her daughter was sick. She'd gotten money and support from the church community. So obviously, after she was criminally convicted, this is a small town. People talked. People were on to her. So the well was dry. You kind of have to move on to a new community of people to keep the scam going. And it is shocking the extent to which child abuse investigations, allegations, convictions do not follow people across state lines.

1:01:04There is not good communication. And also because this is happening so much in the medical system, creates additional barriers, right? Doctors who are seeing a patient for the first time are not going to go on some odyssey, make sure everything the parents telling them is correct. They could not do their jobs. That's not plausible. And so now the doctor in that specific case absolutely did have suspicions of abuse that she didn't report. And that is the rare doctor who I feel like is extremely culpable for what happened to this child. A lot of doctors, they're just doing their jobs the way they do their jobs.

1:01:37And perpetrators are extremely canny about exploiting all of those weaknesses within the system. I noticed a lot of the perpetrators sort of worm their way into social slash otherwise inappropriate relationships with hospital health staff, doctors, nurses, everything. Yes, this is, again, a really common thing. And it's part of the sort of profile of abusers is they do this kind of love bombing behavior with people that they want on their side. And so they do that really do a lot to ingratiate themselves with a particular doctor. And doctors are humans. Some of them are more susceptible to this behavior than others.

1:02:09And they're very good at finding the doctors that are the doctors that want to be the hero. The doctors, they'll come in, they'll tell them, all these other doctors have not been able to figure out what's wrong with my child, and you're the only doctor, and you're so brilliant. And they are writing all these social media posts about them, and they're sending them gifts, and they're bringing them cookies, and they get their cell phone numbers, and they're calling them. And I think Dr. Ness from the season six case, this is my favorite kind of anecdote about this, is that when the child ends up on hospice care, Dr.

1:02:40Ness is in the apartment, celebrated pediatric neurologist, for some reason cleaning the mom's oven. Yeah, again, like I think doctors have to be really careful with their boundaries. And there's all kinds of reasons. Parents in more benign ways might try and bulldoze a doctor's boundaries or just because they're just a regular pushy parent. Or, you know, we're obviously like I think we've all, you know, having been through pregnancy and childbirth twice, you know, you sort of like baby duck imprint on the doctors that help you deliver your child. And I think there is a genuine emotional connection, I think, between parents and doctors oftentimes that is like lovely.

1:03:15but this goes way beyond that, obviously. One thing that's sort of counterintuitive to me is that medical neglect, which you mentioned earlier, and Munchausen by proxy go hand in hand. So you see kids that have lice or something where it's like, you need special shampoo. Like, why do you have lice? Your mom works from home or like stays with you all day. You have long-term untreated conditions, yet you're at the doctor five times a month or whatever, five times a week for all I know. I don't know. I don't understand how those things go together. Like you think this kid would be, aside from their being abused, would have the cleanest teeth.

1:03:50I don't get it. Because there is no actual care for the child. I see. So getting help for the kid is not the point, obviously. Not the point. So yeah, they're treating that child like an object that they're using for their own purposes. So they don't care about the child. That's the bluntest way to say it. they're not behaving like a loving parent and they're not caring for their child and they're depriving their child. There's often medical neglect. They're just not doing the regular sort of checkup things or their child might have some condition that they're just not all that interested in. And so they're not actually getting the child treated for that thing.

1:04:26And also, you know, they're causing issues in their child developmentally by not letting them be around their peers, by telling them they can't do certain things, by starving them, by pulling them out of school. So the neglect is intense. I was talking about that sort of CPS designation of medical neglect being different. And I think we do need that separate medical child abuse, the over-medicalization piece as a designation so people understand that. But yeah, there is often medical neglect and emotional and psychological neglect that comes along with this abuse. How does social media interact with this sort of thing?

1:04:57You would think this is gasoline on the fire, right? Because you get a ton of sympathy online. People are already addicted to social media, right? like getting likes or like support and comments on a photo. So imagine if it's your Munchausen and you're like, my baby's in the ER again, like photo of child with tubes everywhere. And also I would imagine if I'm a con artist, which is essentially kind of what these people are, like half con artist, half abuser, right? It's like kind of a blend of those things. I'm looking at like support groups on Facebook and Wikipedia. And like for the bad actor, there's like a training course basically online for what to look for, the symptoms, people's experiences at the hospital with doctors, An abuser, con artist, whatever, could just reverse engineer a lot of that and then feed their addiction, whatever this is.

1:05:42Oh, absolutely. And I mean, my child's my proxy abuse is not a new phenomenon. It got its official name in the 70s, but it's probably been around since time immemorial. However, in the modern era, it is so much easier to pull off. It used to be that most people who are perpetrators worked in the medical field because those were the people that had the knowledge to pull it off. Right. And those are the people that could go and get medical textbooks and describe symptoms. Now anyone can do that. Right. Pretty instantaneously. And online search history comes up a lot in the police investigations of these cases and can be very relevant.

1:06:16Right. And so the Sophie Hartman case in particular, I remember she was Googling all of these conditions. She was Googling what looked like her plans for the next condition she was going to bring up and that kind of thing. And so you can just see how that makes this absolutely runaway thing. I'm very interested in how this phenomenon is spilled over into people that do not have Munchausen or Munchausen by proxy behaviors, but everyone sort of self-diagnosing online. People seeing TikTok videos and becoming convinced that they have some condition or another. I think we're in like just an overall terrifying moment of medical misinformation, especially with the RFK.

1:06:51junior of it all. So I think it's an interesting context to be talking about this. But I think for people who are doing it deliberately, not only do they have all the medical information you could possibly ever want to pull this off at their fingertips, they have an endless well of attention because if they have burned out the people in their family or community or local church, they can go online, they can find these support groups. An extraordinary element of the Lisa McDaniel story was that she ended up working as the director of patient advocacy for a very prominent foundation, the Guthy Jackson Foundation, that was dedicated to the disease that her son allegedly had.

1:07:26She worked as their director of patient advocacy for 13 years. And this was someone who had been convicted of Munchausen by proxy abuse with her older child. And so she really embedded herself in this community. And that's really common. And I think it's horrifying to think about these communities online that are really such a vital resource for parents whose children do have this disease or for people who are suffering from a disease to then be infiltrated by people who are using all of that information to abuse their children. And it's a really scary thing. And I think anybody involved with a rare disease foundation needs to be on the lookout for it because Lisa is not an isolated phenomenon.

1:08:08And then beyond that, you have the other thing that I've become especially interested in is that there are groups where it's just a very much a legitimate group that's a support group for a legitimate disease. And then there are other groups that really appear to be built specifically for perpetrators to give each other information, to figure out how to evade child abuse allegations, to figure out how to fight them in court, which specialists to go see to give you this wacky diagnosis. Unfortunately, the medical expert witness field is lucrative for doctors who have lost their moral compass or never had one.

1:08:47So any parent with the means, and this is child abuse, period. This is not just medical child abuse, but also abusive head trauma, broken bones. There's this cadre of doctors, unfortunately, that any parent with the means can come testify for them in court and say, oh, no, this wasn't abusive head trauma. This was macrocephaly or one of these sort of conditions. They go, oh, this wasn't broken bones, this child has low vitamin D, so they probably just have rickets. These things are not scientifically sound, but it doesn't mean that they're never effective in court, and they're certainly effective in the media.

1:09:18And just because you can get a doctor, an unscrupulous doctor, to say that your child has X, Y, or Z, and actually that's the explanation for this entire thing, it's not abuse, it's CRPS, or it's not abuse, it's X, Y, Z. And so this is a resource that parents are sharing online very actively. And some of these parents are quite politically active. So it's really terrifying. This stuff is dark. Jeez. Let's lighten the mood with some ads. We'll be right back.

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1:11:09It really is a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now for the rest of my conversation with Andrea Dunlop. You mentioned earlier like nonprofits that are just magnets for these people. They're celebrity adjacent. There's money. There's lots of attention. There's also this huge field of people to manipulate, right? If you've got like an organization that runs, I don't know, a run for Raise for the Cure and it's like your child's one of the poster children for this thing. That's just a lot of exactly what these people are looking for. And the woman in one of your latest seasons who essentially kills her son, rebrands herself as this advocate for parents who have sick children.

1:11:49That's super gross. And she begs her still living daughter not to go on your podcast because her career would be ruined. And I'm just like, oh my God, that was shocking. And she did get fired, fortunately. And yeah, that was a case where she was really exploiting her son after his death in a way that is really chilling and was heralded as this advocate and was, according to their website, had educated thousands of medical professionals about his condition. Imagine being the doctor who was like, yeah, this lady came and had lunch with us and explained all about this neuromyelitis optica, which is a real condition.

1:12:32But we do not think that her son had it after our extensive research into that case and speaking to the diagnosing doctor. And you watch these videos of her, of Lisa presenting on the topic. And I met her. I went to her doorstep to tell her that we were reporting on this. And we always give people a chance to tell their side of the story. You would never know. This is not someone who you just immediately you talk to them and you clock them as you're like, well, that person gives me the creeps. She just seems like a super lovely Southern mom. She's got her statement necklaces and she's perfectly presentable and you would not clock it.

1:13:11And while I think this foundation should have done obviously some more due diligence, considering that she did have a criminal record, but I also see how she snuck past the gates 100 percent. Sure. Yeah. A lot of the sharing from the parents is crazy to me, like way overly detailed, oversharing. It's like medical porn. No, 100 percent. That's the word we use. Yeah, deliberate, quite deliberately. Parents, they'll take photos and they're like, they're dressed in scrubs. And it's like, why are you dressed in scrubs? Visiting your kid? Like you're not treating the kid. You're you're visiting your kid.

1:13:42I don't know. There's GoFundMes, obviously. Right. And the funds are being used by the parent, not the kid. And they're like, it's going to be terrible to lose him. we need to do a make a wish thing. And it's hold on. This is like a disease that might take his eyesight slowly over time. Why are you talking about him dying? Why do you need to make a wish trip to Disneyland? Like what is happening? That has to be really terrifying to watch if you suspect that something is going on because you're like, wait a minute. Like if my kid is sick, I am not blogging about it. And I am not saying when they die or if they die.

1:14:12I'm like, I don't even want to think about that. Let's not do that at all. These parents are like the opposite it somehow. Yeah, it is. And I think that's the behavior that we talked to people who were in and you know, around these cases and involved. It's like they had a gut feeling something was off. And a lot of people had a gut feeling that something was off, but they didn't have a name for it. The doctors gave this diagnosis, they presumed. So they don't want to say, well, it doesn't seem like your kid really has something. Again, it's just incredibly awkward and emotionally difficult situation to be in if you're someone that suspects abuse is happening.

1:14:47And as you said, the behavior is so off. And I think because Lisa was their season six perpetrator, because she was so active online. That's really a lot of what helped me put the pieces together in that case is that throughout the four years of her son's illness and up through his death, Lisa kept a very detailed blog on CaringBridge almost daily throughout his journey. And so we were able to use that information versus reality, both the memories of the people who were around him and also sometimes videos. And it's like she says this kid's in a wheelchair and we have a video of him on that same day running around.

1:15:27So there was a lot that we were able to connect the dots from her social media. And I interviewed some people who her son ended up on hospice care at her request from a non-fatal illness and died there. I interviewed a few people on background who work in pediatric hospice. And again, I have so many conversations on the show where I'm like, that is a job I could never do. I'm so glad there are people that have the emotional fortitude to be able to do that job because it's really important. And Jordan, both of you and I are parents. That's our worst nightmare, right? I think there's a real reluctance on people watching the situations to judge, right?

1:16:07To say, that seems weird. It seems weird that you're talking about your son in the past tense when he's still alive. It seems weird that three days after his death, you're posting about what you should do about the funeral plants. It seems weird that you seem so excited about all of this. All of that stuff that is striking people on a very gut level as wrong and is wrong, people have a real reluctance to call that out because you just think this person's child is dying. Who knows how I would behave? Right. You go like grief is so weird. Grief makes you do weird stuff. You don't think this person doesn't seem to care about their kid.

1:16:41That's freaking psycho. I would just urge people, I think so much of this is about trusting your instincts. Something feels really off. Don't ignore it. And I know that puts people in a really uncomfortable position. But when you're talking about life and death of a child, it's worth being uncomfortable. And in Lisa's case, because she was posting so much on social media and on her blog, she was posting a lot on Facebook. She had these various groups that she was messaging contemporaneously while her son was on hospice. There was a lot of just like really strange behavior. And I think I also want to flag for people, because this has come up in a bunch of cases.

1:17:14This was in two of our season five cases and true of the Beata Kowalski case, which was featured in the Take Care of Maya Netflix film. When a parent is saying their child has an illness that is not fatal. And I want to also point out to people that the existence of an illness, we don't think Colin McDaniel ever had an NMO. He's the kid from your latest season. He's the kid from season six. We don't think that that was a legitimate diagnosis. Maya Kowalski, because of the way that diagnosis came about, which was that her mom decided that was the diagnosis and then found a doctor to give her the diagnosis.

1:17:47I don't think that diagnosis was accurate. Many medical professionals testified that they did not see any symptoms that would match up with CRPS. But there is a part of that that's a red herring because Maya Kowalski could have had CRPS. Colin could have had NMO. Those are not fatal diseases. And their parents were talking about them as though they were going to die persistently in the lead up to, in Colin's instance, the death. in Maya Kowalski's situation. Luckily, her being separated from Beata Kowalski went into the hospital and said, if you don't give her this massive amount of ketamine, I will take her home and put her on hospice so that she can finally die.

1:18:27She doesn't want to live like this anymore. And Beata, furthermore, was an infusion nurse who had been giving her daughter ketamine and other drugs at home. There was no reason to believe that she wasn't going to follow through on that. And I've seen multiple perpetrators follow through on that threat. So when a parent is talking, extensively about how their child is going to die when they don't have a terminal diagnosis, that should absolutely scare everyone. And we should take that really seriously because I am of the opinion that they are telegraphing an intention, or at least you cannot be sure that they're not.

1:19:02That's interesting. Yeah. The other red flag, that's a really big red flag in addition to the others like doctor shopping, moving around, not accepting a diagnosis, aiming for a certain diagnosis. One interesting anecdote was these women who had reported another woman to CPS, they were saying that in a Facebook group, one of the things she was doing, if someone posted about their sick kid, the perpetrator, the mother with Munchausen, she would post something like, my kid was even sicker. His symptoms were even worse. He was in the hospital even longer. It's like a weird game of one-upmanship, like a contest because of the attention and sympathy given to one mother.

1:19:32They're like, no, no, no, we can't have that. That's for me. I need that. 100%. That's a huge piece of the pattern just from beginning to end. And again, that's something that if you're talking to like a sibling or a family member that's been around that person since they were younger, that they'll just say like any time the attention is on someone else, they have a crisis to redirect the attention to them. And so they continue this behavior into the abuse. And so, yeah, that one-upsmanship is something that you see a lot. And it's with Colin. And again, same thing with Maya. there's a lot of this chatter about their child being our season five case as well the Sophie Harmon case their child being the most rare and the most serious case of this that's ever been recorded which I think is just something that like a normal parent doesn't want their child to have the worst version of this but this is not a normal parent this is a parent there's this always leaning into this drama, right?

1:20:24This drama of having the rarest case, the most severe case, the case that is baffling all of these doctors. And that's where they can sometimes really play into a susceptible doctor's ego because they're saying like, oh, you have this zebra, you have the most rare case, and they're going to write studies about it. And there's going to be a medical breakthrough because of my kid. And that's really about the parent. That's really about the parents' ego and them sort of wanting the attention of having this super rare case that people are going to write papers about and that kind of thing. Doesn't this mess with the science, though?

1:21:00Because if you're like infiltrating a rare disease advocacy group and you're going to all the specialists and they're like, huh, usually people with this have this kind of thing in their blood, this rare case, this guy, he doesn't have it. We got to add him to the sample size. And then it's just screwing up all of the science. You're polluting the sample pool. Doesn't that happen at some level? Because it's rare. If you have 10 samples and one of them is bullshit, that's a problem. It's a real concern, certainly with Lisa McDaniel being so involved in the NMO community. And she talked about her son donating samples to their biorepository, which we do believe happened.

1:21:38Sophie Hartman, again, that was her daughter, allegedly had AHC, which is alternating hemiplegia of childhood. Again, I don't believe that diagnosis is accurate because I read a sworn affidavit from a neurologist that was not the diagnosis. She was taking her to the specialty clinic at Duke Hospital. And yeah, there is a real concern about polluting the science with these rare diseases. Because if you have, it's exactly as you said, if you have a very small sample size, again, most people, even in these disease communities, are not going to be abusers. But I think rare disease communities and studies and doctors who treat those rare diseases are such targets for these abusers that I think many of them do find their way into these sample sizes.

1:22:22It's amazing to me that doctors and judges go along with it, even when, in your case, in the latest season, another doctor calls and says, this is what's happening. It's medical child abuse. And then the doctor's like, OK, I don't know. The lesson really, and you say this a lot on the show, is that people believe their eyes. They believe their eyes over everything else. And judges are also human beings. And judges are not necessarily medically knowledgeable. It's not their field of study. So if you are in a situation, particularly if you have parents with resources who can go into court and say, this happened in my case.

1:22:57This happened in many other cases. This happened in the Kowalski case, right? They had these other experts testifying about CRPS. a judge is not necessarily going to know, sitting on the bench, who is credible and who isn't, right? These doctors are saying one thing, and now these other doctors are saying other things, so I don't know who am I to be the tiebreaker. And so, unfortunately, that means that prosecutors who prosecute child abuse cases really need to be knowledgeable about this cadre of experts. That's part of the solution. The solution is obviously complex. Part of it is just that confusion about this abuse.

1:23:32If you don't even understand what Munchausen by proxy abuse is, and you're sitting on the bench, which is unfortunately really common, you're looking at someone who appears like a sympathetic mother. And they get up there, and they tell you a sob story, and they cry in court, and they say, these horrible doctors have accused me of abuse, and I just have this sick child. And look at everything I've done for my child. I quit my job to take care of my child. And they're looking at something, like, often is not, where the child does have a diagnosis. Now, that diagnosis was achieved by fraudulent means.

1:24:04If you don't understand what this abuse is, you're going to be like, but this child was diagnosed with this condition. It's just that absolute lack of knowledge by everyone involved really just lets the vast majority of these cases fly by. I've met a number of adult survivors at this point. I only know one who was actually separated from their abuser, and that was because Detective Mike Weber was involved. Be on the lookout, folks. This stuff happens right under our noses. Really scary and really sad. It's pretty heroic you're exposing this. I bet you are deeply unpopular with certain groups of people.

1:24:40Holy cow. Oh, thank you for saying that, Jordan. And yes, I am. Correct. That's been something to get used to. Certainly, I think that especially started as I did cover this higher profile case, which ended in a big court judgment and was in subject of a very sympathetic to their cause Netflix film. Fortunately, that verdict was vacated by the Florida Court of Appeals. That's been an interesting case to follow. But yeah, I mean, I think like I'm talking about something that makes people really uncomfortable. Parents rights groups are extremely active in this country. They are extremely well funded and well organized and they don't like me, as you can imagine.

1:25:24And that's all okay. I'm really, really at peace with that. I have interviewed many child abuse pediatricians on the show, including Dr. Sally Smith, who got the worst public treatment of any of them. And their fortitude in doing the right thing, despite all of that, is something that I admire so much that I figure, like, people yelling about me online is nothing to worry about. Thanks, Andrea, for your work on this and for coming back on the show today. Really interesting. And of course, people will link to the podcast in the show notes so people can get into the weeds on this if they're interested.

1:26:02That was great. And you're such a great interviewer. You always do such a nice amount of homework and it shows. So I appreciate you. Thank you so much, Jordan, for having me back on. Always a pleasure to talk to you. You're about to hear a preview with Ken Burns, who says the real American revolution wasn't a clean break from Britain, but a messy, violent civil war whose contradictions we are still debugging 250 years later. A good story neutralizes the binary yes and no, you know, you're bad, left, right, young, old, rich, poor, whatever the dialectic is you're involved in. A good story can sort of neutralize it and go, oh, wow, I didn't know that.

1:26:40There's no test. We'd share with you our process of discovery. So all the stuff I've said about the revolution, I had no idea. Going in, And I am so overwhelmed with the joy of acquiring it that giving it away feels even better. The ideas are really, really powerful at the heart of this. The idea that you could be a citizen, that you could have a say in your government after your family has worked the land for a thousand years for somebody else. And all of a sudden you come here and you own some land and farm and you can do this and you're literate. Democracy is a really messy form of government, but it's better than all the other forms.

1:27:18because the other forms involve a kind of tyranny, an authoritarian certainty. Democracy is messy because you actually have to listen to people that you disagree, and you have to compromise. When that breaks down, then you lose the possibility of having it. America comes out of violence. It's born in violence. What would you guys do? What would I do? Would I be a loyalist? Would I be a patriot? What would I be willing to fight for? What would I be willing to give my life and all that I've accumulated in my life, my fortune? Would I do that? We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

1:27:53For more on what else we've been getting wrong about our own origin story, check out episode 1238 with Ken Burns. This episode forces you to confront the version of America you didn't learn in school. So, yeah, this is one of those episodes that's going to stick with you. Because once you see the patterns, once you understand how this works, you realize how easily it can hide in plain sight. the oversharing, the constant medical crises, the need to one-up every other sick kid's story in the room, and the scariest part, the systems designed to protect kids can actually be used to protect the abuser, especially when they're charming, manipulative, and very, very convincing.

1:28:30So the takeaway here, it's not paranoia, it's awareness, because this isn't some rare fringe disorder. It's underreported, underdiagnosed, and evolving, especially with social media pouring gasoline on the attention economy. Big thanks to Andrea for coming on and doing the kind of work that makes a lot of very dangerous people deeply uncomfortable. This stuff does not happen in dark alleys, folks. It happens right under our noses. All things Andrea Dunlop will be in the show notes on the website. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

1:28:59Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about 6 Minute Networking as well over at 6minutenetworking.com. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. this show was created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sadlowskis, Ian Baird, Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.

1:29:27If you know somebody who might be affected by this or would be deeply interested in this, maybe medical personnel needs to hear this, share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.