Pubdate: Thu, 02 Mar 2017 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2017 The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456 Page: A12 ANSWERS, AT LAST How could the program have been running for 10 years with so many shortcomings? For 2 1⁄ 2 years, a Star investigation has revealed scandalous short 2 comings that shattered families and ruined reputations in the now-defunct Motherisk hair-testing program at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. The stories led to provincial and internal reviews of the program that tested hair strands for traces of drug or alcohol abuse. Now the Star's Rachel Mendleson has confirmed the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is investigating the founder and former director of the discredited program, Dr. Gideon Koren. The college won't provide details of the probe or when it was launched, but it is long overdue. Too many questions have been left outstanding about how the Motherisk program could have been run for a full 10 years with so many alarming shortcomings that affected so many child protection and criminal cases. In fact, Koren and SickKids are named as co-defendants in several lawsuits seeking damages on behalf of parents who claim they lost custody of their children due to Motherisk's flawed hair tests. The lawsuits come as no surprise. The provincial review concluded that Motherisk's hair tests were "unreliable" and "inadequate for use in the thousands of child protection proceedings across Canada and handful of criminal cases in which they were submitted as evidence between 2005 and 2015." And SickKids' own investigation revealed that Motherisk had misled the hospital for years about how it carried out its tests. Meanwhile, an ongoing probe of thousands of child protection cases in Ontario that relied on Motherisk testing for traces of drug or alcohol abuse has so far identified 24 cases in which the hair tests played a key role in the decision to remove children from their families. Among the questions raised in the provincial review by Justice Susan Lang that the college would do well to consider when investigating Koren: Why no one in the lab he created and oversaw had forensic training, even though child protection cases were the "bread and butter" of the lab's work. Why the lab did not have the capability to confirm results from 2005 to 2010 with the so-called gold standard of testing. Why the lab failed to inform children's aid societies and other customers that the results were only preliminary. It's time there were answers from Motherisk's founder and director. The college's job now is to get them, and make them public. - --- MAP posted-by: Matt