Andrea Dunlop

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 online.

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.

And 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 don't

have lost their moral compass or never had one.

So 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.

And 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 XYZ.

And so this is a resource that parents are sharing online very actively.