David Southall
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Professor David Southall, OBE, is a UK paediatrician who is a controversial expert in Fabricated or Induced Illness (FII, also known as "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy"), and who has performed significant research into sudden infant death syndrome.
Prior to becoming a paediatrician, Southall spent four years in general adult medicine, one year in obstetrics and two years as a general practitioner.
Between 1986 and 1994, Southall led a pilot research project into FII involving video surveillance of young hospital patients in an effort to observe their carers (such as parents or guardians) harming them. The project, which was conducted at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, and the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary in Stoke-on-Trent, observed carers using methods such as suffocation and poisoning to harm the children. As a result of the project, thirty-three parents or stepparents who had harmed their children were prosecuted, and twenty-three were diagnosed with FII.
The project attracted controversy for its methods and for the ethical implications of the research. Critics argued that the desire of the researchers to observe the carers harming the children exposed the children to further abuse, that the betrayal of doctor-patient trust necessarily involved in the surveillance could cause harm to the subjects, and that "a diagnosis should lead to treatment, not punishment". However, the researchers argued that the surveillance saved the lives of many of the children involved, and Southall himself said that "[b]y doing covert video surveillance we are betraying the trust of parents... [b]ut if a parent has been abusing his or her child in this way then the trust between child and parent has already gone."
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