There is a new update on the Karina Hansen case in Denmark.
(** Update: at request of readers, I am adding this information. Karina was diagnosed with CFS/ME in the country of Denmark, which had recently decided that ME does not exist. She was dragged from her home, imprisoned, restricted from seeing her family, and placed under guardianship at the age of 24. She has been fighting since that time to win her freedom… )
A judgment was rendered today in her ongoing court case to try to get the guardianship over her ended. The court has ruled in favor of Karina Hansen, and has ended the state-appointed guardianship over Karina Hansen!!! The nightmare is over, and Karina’s life can finally start again.
Here is some background on the case...
Karina began showing signs of illness in 2008 and she was diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.).
In 2009, Denmark reclassified M.E. as a somatic disorder (aka “It’s all in your head”). Specifically, the man who runs the Hammel Neurocenter, Per Fink, had developed a new “diagnosis” called “bodily distress syndrome”, and he wanted to get it published in the ICD-11 and clearly, he was a political operator. Denmark wanted the international acclaim of such a “scientific breakthrough”. Karina’s illness was a perfect case for research, to prove out Per Fink’s diagnosis and make Per Fink and Denmark famous.
Karina rejected the Denmark government’s medical care, and sought treatment from international ME medical experts. Please note that ME is a very serious disease. It can lead to extreme disability and can also be fatal. Based on what is known, it is likely that Karina’s brain and spinal chord were inflamed. Sensory stimulation like light and sound could be excruciating, and excess physical exertion could kill her. Since Per Fink did not believe that Karina had ME or that ME existed, he placed her in an environment that was excruciating for her, and which worsened her condition every minute she was there. Also, emotional distress can cause a worsening of ME. Getting dragged out of your house, and told you may never see your family again certainly would have exacerbated her condition.
Karina’s mother received payments from the government to care for her daughter due to Karina’s disability. It was likely these payments which made Karina a target. They put her on the government’s radar, and gave the government an excuse to move against her. We need to understand the unintended consequences of programs like disability in the context of human rights.
In fear of the growing pressure against her to submit herself to the government’s care, Karina had a mental competency exam, which she passed, and filled out documents making her parents her guardian in case she was incapacitated. She could feel the terrifying power of the police state aligning itself against her, and desperately tried to protect herself with what energy was available to her, exercising her legal rights as an adult.
But, it was not enough. Nothing could have protected her from what came against her — the full force of the government of Denmark, a seething stew of corruption, greed and ambition.
In 2013, a small army of police, doctors and social workers arrived at Karina’s home, and physically dragged her away while she begged her family to save her. She was held incommunicado. Her family was not allowed to communicate with her. Karina was 24 years old.
They later discovered that Karina made a total of 43 phone calls and sent 7 texts in an attempt to get help before her phone died. Her last call was a call to the police that lasted about 40 seconds. Transcripts have been requested but not provided.
She was too ill to charge her phone. When the battery died, all hope of contact with the outside world died with it.
Then, to avoid legal complications, the clinic claimed Karina was there “voluntarily”. Of course, no one could get in touch with her to confirm it. If you believe that, I have some oceanfront property in Arizona to sell you. What we do know is that she clearly expressed her refusal to go in the first place, and that as soon as she was able to communicate, she expressed a desire to leave and return to her family. I have absolutely no doubt that her presence at that clinic was never voluntary.
In 2016, Karina was moved to a rehabilitation center. Her condition had severely deteriorated, and she was now in a wheelchair and nearly unable to communicate. Fortunately, after moving to the rehab center with different staff, the family were able to slowly re-establish contact and Karina slowly recovered the ability to communicate. As soon as she could, Karina communicated her wish to return home and stay there. In late 2016, Karina finally got her wish. She was allowed to return home on a provisional basis.
However, Karina continued to have a state appointed guardian, and was still being forcibly medicated. Karina could not demand her own medical records. Karina could not fight in court on her own behalf. Karina could not choose her own doctor. Karina could not refuse to take the medicine they forced on her. Evidence shows that she had toxic levels of drugs in her system causing an alarming level of muscle rigidity.
Meanwhile, new research based on autopsies of deceased mental health patients in Denmark has demonstrated that many psychiatric patients are dying 20 years too early and at least 10% of them are dying from drug toxicity.
After Karina returned home, she reached out to another doctor that she trusted (unlike the ones that her guardian was forcing on her), Stig Gerdes, who attempted to slowly wean Karina off these medications that were making her sicker Denmark suspended Gerdes’s medical license for 2 years because he did not consult with the doctors who overdosed her (he has stated he did not trust them), or get permission from Karina’s guardian to treat her (he didn’t trust him either, and Karina herself asked him to help her). Gerdes recently lost a case to get the suspension overturned. The suspension was about to end, anyway, but Gerdes says he fought it in court, anyway, in an effort to try to get some public exposure of the political corruption and patient abuse in this case.
Today, finally, Karina got the court ruling that she has been waiting for, and is an actual person again in the eyes of the law. She can choose her own doctors, and choose what medications she wants to take. She can demand her own records and try to hold people accountable for their actions, if she chooses — undoubtedly a motivating factor for those who wanted to keep her under guardianship. She can live where she wants to live and with whomever she wants to live with. She came make all sorts of decisions for herself that we all take for granted, that she has not had the freedom to do for that past 5 years, since a small army of people sent by the government burst into her home and dragged her away to lock her up, all for committing the terrible crime of choosing her own doctor, and perhaps for the crime of being on disability.
I am reminded of the words of Jane Austen, “I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.”
In the meantime, the man who led the team of doctors who did all of these things to Karina Hansen, the man who wants his “Bodily Distress Syndrome” diagnosis published in the ICD-11, the man who wants all patients with M.E. to be misdiagnosed, abused and denied appropriate care by their doctors… Columbia University has invited that man, Per Fink, a Medical Kidnapper, to present a lecture, and is offering continuing medical education credits to people who attend his lecture. Please sign the petition at the end of this diary if you want to stop him, or go there and protest.
There are several things we can learn from Karina’s experience.
We need to tighten up Due Process in any situation where a guardian is appointed to a child or adult, an elderly person, or a disabled person, or anyone, in our court system. We need very high standards of evidence, and due process protections like criminal courts. The right to face people who are trying to take away our rights, evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, a right to a speedy trial, a right to a trial by jury, and any other right that we take from granted in criminal courts to ensure that our human rights are not taken from us without Due Process.
We need to look at how disability and medical care affects our liberty. A person should be on disabiity if they are deemed at this time to be disabled. That does not give the government a right to try to force them to subject themselves to specific medical treatments, or to force them to become abled. At most, we should only ever stop payments if we feel someone is not doing enough to get off disability — not burst into people’s homes and kidnap them or force them into care they did not consent to.
We need to assess our laws with respect to the legal rights that are held by persons under guardianship. Guardianship should be there to assist, not to repress. People should still always have a right to assert themselves legally to the extent they are capable, whether it means choosing a different doctor, refusing a treatment, demanding their own records, talking to their own lawyer, filing their own court case or visiting with whomever they please, whether it’s their own family or their own lawyer, including paying a right to pay their own lawyer or demand that he be paid, to fight to have their guardianship overturned (you can see how a guardian can get an unfair advantage).
We need to strengthen laws around financial planning, guardianship and medical proxies. When an individual executes an order to prepare for a life event, such as signing guardianship papers in case of being capacitated, those arrangements should hold the highest weight in our courts. A person’s own legally executed wishes should not be superceded without meeting extremely, nearly impossibly high standards, in the only the most extreme of emergencies. If I sign a document saying I’d prefer to take my chances with my own kin than a court appointed guardian, then that should be respected.
We need to strengthen kith and kin rights. There should be a very high bar to ever appoint someone who is not a close friend or family member as a guardian, whether it’s a CPS case, elderly care case or something other.
We need to ensure that when a guardianship case is held in court, that the person targeted is legally notified of the proceeding and given a right to try to attend, and that the nearest available kin is also legally notified of the proceeding and given a right to try to attend. If the individual or kin can not present, then the order should be very, very, very narrow and very, very, very time-limited or deferred until the individual or his kin are present. We must ensure that temporary orders can never become de facto permanent orders.
In the Mayo Clinic Medical Kidnap, the hospital went to two judges to try this trick, and the family says they were never notified and were not present. This woman could have lost her legal personhood without her every even being aware that there was a court case going on to strip her of her personhood.
We also need to strengthen the rights of teenagers with respect to CPS or medical care choice. Teens should have a right to refuse care and assistance. That includes CPS. If we made CPS assistance voluntary for older teens, it would transform that entire service practically overnight. If an agency wants those federal funds, let them find ways to entice teens to say, “yes”. Because, as horrifying as it is to see this done to an adult, it is even more horrifying to see it done to teens such as Justina Pelletier and Isaiah Rider.
It is not a crime to have a chronic illness. Kids do not deserve to be locked up and separated from their loved ones and tormented against their will because they are sick. They know very well that they are sick. Probably better than we do. It is their choice. They should have a right to decide who touches their bodies. Let me say it again! Young men and women should always have a right to decide who touches their bodies, and that includes doctors who want to do the touching.
Let us all stop for a moment on reflect on the Catholic Church, and understand why this is absolutely, unequivocally necessary.
We should ensure that families cannot be restricted from contact with their relatives who are hospitalized or in institutions, except in the case that a patient has independently, in front of unbiased witnesses, executed a document requesting that specific individuals not be allowed to visit. It should never be within the power of a doctor to restrict a patient’s family from visiting, within reason. Perhaps setting visiting hours, but not preventing visits, and not restricting what is said (as happened in the Pelletier case and the Mayo case).
We should also understand that psychological diagnoses can be used to violate human rights and make sure that this does not happen in our courts. While psychological diagnoses may be useful in a voluntary medical context, they do not belong in a court of law. We need to stick to the hard science in our courts, such as whether lab reports demonstrate findings consistent with a cancer diagnosis. There are not “lab report” findings that can prove “Pervasive Arousal Withdrawal Syndrome” or “Medical Child Abuse” beyond a reasonable doubt. Such diagnoses fall in the purview of philosophy not science. Allowing this kind of “evidence” in courts is asking for abuse.,
Also, we need to exclude “hearsay” from our court systems. We should allow CPS or hospitals seeking a guardianship to offer the evidence. They are biased and secondhand sources. We need to require that evidence be presented firsthand in all custody cases. If the school said something to CPS, then the school needs to come say it to the court. There have been multiple public cases of CPS lies in courts. We need to use the same laws as in criminal courts. Evidence needs to come from the source.
After we chase Per Fink out of our country, let’s do what we need to do in our own country to reform our courts, so there is never another Justina Pelletier or Isaiah Rider in our own country, and to make sure there is never a Karina Hansen in our country, to make sure con artists are not allowed to prey on our elderly of their freedom and their wealth by taking advantage of loopholes in our court systems. Let’s make sure that simply being young, sick, elderly, disabled or in need doesn’t mean we can be stripped of person-hood.
Please sign the petition to stop Per Fink from speaking at Columbia.
OK, I will stop diarying now. This is not really my thing. But, we need to stop this guy. And…. Karina is FREE!!!
I hope I don’t get in trouble for publishing to Kosability. I’ve never done that before. But, I saw the option, so I went for it.