Two mothers are suing two New Jersey hospitals in the United States for carrying out drug tests without their consent during their delivery. These turned out to be false positives due to poppy seed bagels.
The two women, Kate L. and Kaitlin K., represented by the “American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (ACLU-NJ), deplored that the hospitals carried out their tests not only without notifying them, but also without prior reason.
“No one should be subjected to unnecessary and non-consensual drug testing. Our customers are sending a clear message to hospitals that these testing and reporting policies are unacceptable,” said ACLU-NJ attorney Molly Linhorst.
According to information in court documents, the two women had consumed a poppy seed bagel, which led to a positive result for opiates.
“I feel violated. This whole ordeal was extremely stressful and turned our lives upside down. And now, because of what happened, I live in fear of medical tests and how they could be used against me as a mother,” Kaitlin K. claimed, adding that she learned that the lab used a threshold significantly lower than the federal government’s standard. Indeed, the threshold was 200 times lower than the guidelines.
Despite the absence of opioids in the analyzes of the two newborns, the Hackensack University Medical Center and the Virtua Voorhees Hospital still made a report to youth protection. The investigations, which lasted for months, traumatized them, can we read in a press release from the ACLU-NJ.
“I felt like the doctors were questioning my character and my parenting skills,” Kate L.
Why false positives?
According to the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and the Repression of Fraud in France, poppy seeds are oilseeds from the plant “Papaver somniferum L.” which naturally contains opium alkaloids, the best known of which are morphine and codeine.