The Gypsy Rose Obsession, part 5

Javier: In our last episode we left you hanging with the nerdiest of cliff hangers. We revealed that Gypsy Rose Blanchard has a rare genetic disorder....

Speaker: local m0nster: new information is being released right now exposing Gypsy Rose, and it looks like the only thing she may have been a victim of is having a crazy con artist for a mother, but not a mother with Munchausen.

It's Ashely: Gypsy Rose, right here, has microdeletion 1q21.1.

Speaker: tiktok snitch: Gypsy Rose Blanchard had a microdeletion 1q21.1,

Hannah J: She has a microdeletion which causes almost every issue that they were trying to treat,

Javier: does it? Does it explain everything?

Fancy: It does explain everything.

Javier: the feeding tube, the leukemia, the, the paralysis.

Fancy: of it. All of it.

Speaker: tiktok snitch: Gypsy had issues with her GI tract. Started with her mouth, with her swallowing issues, She was a whopping 36 pounds at like the age of eight, local m0nster: Small head, increased possibility of mild or moderate developmental delay, slightly unusual facial features, loose joints, double joints, seizures, disturbances of the eye, feeding tubes.

Hannah J: So yeah, she was actually sick. Her mom wasn't abusing her. She may have been pushing extremely hard to get medical care, but all of the procedures she got were in relation to her microdeletion complications.

Javier: I've read the report. It's true. This genetic disorder could cause some of these issues. So does that mean that Dee Dee didn't medically abuse her daughter? That she was simply just a worried mom tying to turn over every rock to find out what was wrong with Gypsy?

Amber: a lot of the things that were done to her medically all kind of make sense in relation to the microdeletion. so most of her surgeries were actually on her eyes. she's only had a few different invasive surgeries This is Alaura and Amber from into the weeds. a few invasive surgeries is subjective when you're a child.

Javier: Saliva glands right Well, and I wouldn't necess- well, I guess it is invasive. Um, I don't know. I've been through a lot of procedures and things like that.

Amber: I haven't had my saliva glands removed or anything like that. But, um I mean The feeding tube was invasive, but, um, she spent a month in the f- in a feeding hospital in Louisiana, I believe,

Alaura: uh,

Amber: before they put that feeding tube in her. That she was being studied for, like, a month in a hospital

Speaker: (look into this)

Amber: a lot of the stuff that she went through is kinda stuff that I feel like they were just trying to figure out what was wrong with her So I'm not a medical expert. I'm not gonna pretend like I am whatsoever, but it seemed like a lot of the stuff that they did is what you would naturally do in order to figure out what you have wrong with you. it's really hard to diagnose somebody Mm-hmm. And I have a feeling that a lot of what happened is is that Dee Dee and Gypsy would go to a doctor's appointment after a workup or something like that. They would be told, "Oh, well, we think it's this And then and they and they would probably say, "We think it's this. We need to do some more testing We need to figure some more stuff out. But we think it's this And then Dee Dee would latch onto whatever that was, and then go tell friends and family- Uh-huh this is what Gypsy has. But then that's what it w it it wasn't that, it was this microdeletion.

Javier: Gypsy would say probably Well if I had all these problems and my mom was trying to play trial and error why don't I have these problems now

Amber: So we don't know that We don't really know that because we're not in her everyday life What we do know is is that Gypsy has been filmed with a bag of, a, a Ziploc bag of medicine, you know, quite a substantial bit of medicine in her Ziploc bag that was sitting on her bed. Um, when you look at her walk, especially there's there's a video of her walking down a step at a fair, and you can tell that there's something very wrong with her gait or something. She has to like almost like turn her body and sidestep and not extend her knee and then let herself down like halfway like to the side Mmhmm And she walks like that like a lot. If you just look at She doesn't have a lot of videos of her walking. Mm-hmm. But anytime you see a video of her walking also, if you watch her eat It it seems like she has an issue actually eating Swallowing too swallowing and again this is just us, you know, making observations- Observations who who knows what's really true or not

Speaker: I spent half the day with gypsy and I didn't notice any unusual walking or eating. Before I picked her up from the interview, I bought her an iced latte, and witnessed her eating snacks with no problem. And in fact, I have video of Gypsy walking for a portion of the video shoot. I didn't notice any issues. I have to tell you, I personally like Amber and Alaura. And I think they're pretty smart and level headed. But we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. But there's one thing we should all acknowledge.

Amber: I do think she's traumatized in certain ways I don't know how she could- Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm ... have all that stuff happen whether it was necessary or unnecessary, without being phased You know what I mean? I'm traumatized by the medical procedures I've been through. Yeah.

Javier: That's what we're gong to focus on today. Were Gypsy's medical procedure necessary? Does this genetic disorder explain her mother's behavior? We'll get into it. I'm Javier Leiva and this is PRETEND... Stories about people pretending to be someone else. Before we start geeking out over microdeletion 1q21.1... let's close the loop on Gypsy's private medical records. Here's the thing.... Fancy Macelli released some of Gypsy's medical records but not all of them. We have an incomplete picture... yet, hundreds of gypsy's critics have made up their minds. This microdeletion result is the smoking gun.

Bree: Fancy has all of them, but she's only released 300 pages. I have probably 8,000 pages of medical records. And you can't know Gypsy's story with 300 pages of medical records. You can't. Like, 300 pages doesn't even fill one binder that I have. Like, just in one binder there's like probably 3,000 pages. So you're, you're, you know, manipulating your audience to make you think, to m- to make them think that you have all the facts, but you don't.

Javier: I asked Fancy about this... By curating what you release, it's like we don't know what we don't know, right? So maybe you picked out some documents that, that point to, uh, a, a narrative that maybe you had at the time or maybe still have or something like that. And then maybe there's like a bunch of evidence in that stack that points to something else.

Fancy: For sure, and

Javier: we don't know that, right?

Speaker: Medical Experts Reviewed Files

Fancy: I do because I had a medical staff go through them. I went and sought out professionals. Both doctors and nurses have reviewed these files and educated me on every single piece of information in these files, when we found the microdeletion, it really put everything into perspective,

Javier: Here's content creator Audaceous Audrey

Audrey: And if you look at her microdeletion, um, I'm s- you said you've seen the medical. If you look at the very bottom of the page, there is a note that says there is a high link with schizophrenia.

Javier: there's a wide range of stuff. Like there are people that have it and don't even know they have it. And then there are people that have the far end, which is like what you said, like one of the most extreme cases, like having schizophrenia and, and stuff like that. And so, um, it would be cool to have an expert really o- opine on that because they're just... It's we're all talking out of line here, Right. Well, out of opinion because, like you said, we're not geneticists. So I found a genetics expert to help break this down for us.

Kira Dineen: I'm Kira Dineen. I am a licensed certified genetic counselor. . I have been hosting and producing DNA Today, which is a genetics podcast, I got my undergrad degree in, like, chromosomes

Javier: Oh, really?

Kira Dineen: it's cytogenetics. And then my master's is in genetic counseling, so more how to talk to people about this.

Javier: By day, Kira helps families with chromosomal conditions make sense out of disorders. And by night, she's a podcaster who talks to leaders in genetics about the latest research in the field. So if anyone can explain this chromosnal disorder, she can.

Kira Dineen: It's because these conditions are just so rare, they're so unique. So it's not like, oh, it's this condition, I know everything about it.

Javier: I sent Kira the 19 page Gypsy's Chromosone Disorder Tests results.

Kira Dineen: it is interesting that, you know, from my memory, that there was a couple things that did overlap,

Javier: Mm-hmm.

Kira Dineen: you know, surp- like, know, surprising in some ways.

Javier: And so these people that are on the anti-Gypsy camp, they're saying, "Hey, uh, Dee Dee Blanchard, the mom, did not have Munchausen by proxy," because they point to this and they're like, "This is the reason that she didn't know what it was, but she knew something was wrong and so that's why she did all these things." And we'll get to that. We'll get to that. I think we should start with explaining genetics to somebody that doesn't understand it.

Kira Dineen: Yeah, there's so many different terms out there, right? DNA, genes, chromosomes, the genome, I think our conversation here is gonna be focused more on chromosomes. So the genome is our whole library, if we're gonna use this library analogy. So our genome provides instructions for our body to develop and function, and it's made up of books, right? So our chromosomes are like the books of this genomic library, and this library is made up of 46 of these books. books comes from the egg, 23 books comes from the sperm. So for a lot of people, that's coming from mom and dad. When you open a book, there's chapters. So the chapters we can call genes. They're little parts of the book. So within the chapters are letters that are creating these sentences, right?

Javier: Got it. So the genome is the whole library. The chromosomes are the books. Within the books are chapters, the genes. So now let's talk about Gypsy's microdeletion. How does that come into play? do you pronounce it 1Q21.1

Kira Dineen: So close. That's what everyone says. So

Javier: Okay

Kira Dineen: 1Q21.1. cause if you say 21, you know,

Javier: Yeah.

Kira Dineen: many genetics nerds are gonna be listening, but, you know, I would be like, "He doesn't know what he's talking about." But yeah, you got it

Javier: all right. So now I, I'm gonna be talking the talk. We'll call it a microdeletion because it's a lot easier to say than 1q21.1. But, you know, explain that microdeletion

Kira Dineen: Sure. So when we talk about a microdeletion, it's what it sounds like. Micro is tiny, deletion is a missing piece. we have a missing piece of a chromosome,

Javier: So what we're talking about here, 1q21.1, one meaning chromosome one, so we're talking about book number one.Kira explains that we have two copies of book number one. We've got one from the sperm that created us, one from the egg that created us. So within Gypsy Rose's chromosome one, a copy of it of two, there is a missing piece So if we're breaking that down even further, like, well, where is this missing piece? 'Cause chromosome one is the biggest chromosome that we have, Kira says to think of it like an address. Start with the whole chromosome, then zoom in. And zoom in again. And keep going until you're standing on one tiny spot.

Kira Dineen: So that's how we end up getting 1q21.1, If she was a patient of mine or I got this kind of result for another patient I would know exactly where that missing piece is in the genome and I would also be able to do research to say, "Well, what genes are in that section that's missing, and what do those genes do?" to learn more about how could this affect someone's health, how could it affect their body, what symptoms could they have with this?

Javier: And I mean, you know, for a layman like me, you're talking about like this is just one chap- half of a chapter. I mean, like, it sounds so small and insignificant, but how big of an impact does this have on somebody if they are missing that portion?

Kira Dineen: So genetics is rarely straightforward, which keeps me interested, but then it's even harder to explain it for people. But as you were, you know, on the right path of an answer there with this is a small, 'cause it's called microdeletion, so we're like, "Okay, that makes sense." But we're talking about 1%, about, of chromosome one. that's really small But what is really challenging about genetics is there is not a straightforward correlation between bigger deletion and more health problems. So we're talking about a few chapters missing in this book or maybe a chapter. we're talking about 1% of one book out of the genomic library When it comes to this microdeletion, I mean, it can range from some people not having any symptoms at all, all the way to severe developmental delay and multiple congenital anomalies, which is basically a way of saying that someone may not meet certain milestones. And a lot of people would then ask like, can the same deletion do nothing to one person but really affect someone else?" I wanna know the same answer there because we don't know at this point someone can have a smaller head size. So that's a term that we call microcephaly. We can also see that someone has shorter stature, so how tall they are.

Javier: Mm-hmm.

Kira Dineen: might have eye problems, like clouding of the lenses, something that we call cataracts, About 75% of kids that have this microdeletion have delayed development in some way. So what could that mean? So that could mean that they're not sitting at the appropriate age where we start to see that, or standing or walking. also can see that some people have intellectual disabilities, some learning problems, but usually those are more mild with this condition.

Javier: And people with 1q21.1 microdeletion tend to have similar facial features. Seriously, look it up. You will find many of these people look just like Gyspy. Here's a Lexann16, a tiktok user, who looks like she could be gypsy's distant cousin.

Speaker: My kids have the same chromosomal deletion that Gypsy Rose does. Yes, I most likely have it as well, but I can't, or I haven't been tested, um, my insurance won't cover it, and I'm not about to pay out the butt to have some genetic testing. This deletion can show up different for everyone. Like I said, they're pretty sure that I have it, and I'm like a normal, though what is normal, functioning adult. people that have this deletion don't even know it, like myself. Now, the only reason my kiddos got tested is because they were born at 26 weeks, and they were in the NICU for 108 days, and the only thing holding them back was feeding issues. They did a microarray, which is looking at every itty-bitty detail of your chromosomes, and they did find that they have the 1q21.1 microdeletion. How it shows up for my kiddos, we're still kind of waiting to see. Yes, they do have feeding issues. They've had to have G-tubes, uh, gastrostomy tubes in their bellies to get the majority of their nutrition up until the time they were about one, one and a half. One of my kiddos just got his G-tube removed, the other kiddo still has it. But yeah, so far they are typical three-year-olds, um, driving me insane every day, and I am thankful and blessed that they do because it was touch and go with them for a little while.

Kira Dineen: and you brought up, that can look similar, and that's because there's some more distinct facial features that are associated with this condition. they're not gonna be as obvious as some other conditions. So y- someone may have a more prominent forehead. They could have the tip of their nose be bigger and more rounded. They can have a longer space between their nose and their upper lip.

Javier: so far she's checking off all these, these attributes, right? But like you said, it, it's not a hard and fast rule, right? Like, so let, mm-hmm

Kira Dineen: are less frequent. But one that I think might be relevant to bring up, and Javier, you would know this more than me, but I- I'm wondering if seizures ever came up, because I'm less familiar with her case than you are.

Javier: In 2009, Gypsy sees a neurologist. Dee Dee tells him the seizures started when Gypsy was three months old. He writes it down. He also writes that he doesn't have the MRI. Doesn't have the EEG. Doesn't have anything from Louisiana. So there's nothing to check her story against. There's just Dee Dee. And every doctor after him copies it forward. In fairness, seizures really are on the list of things you'd expect with this deletion. Kira brought them up before I did. So Dee Dee could have been telling the truth. But here's the thing. The only way to confirm a seizure is to catch one on an EEG. And in these records, nobody ever does. What about psychiatric and behavioral, um, aspects? Do, do these people experience any of that?

Kira Dineen: Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up because psychiatric and behavioral problems do affect some people that have this. It is a small percentage. I think also something else to mention with all this is there's not that many people that have been documented as having the same deletion that she has. some of those do include autism spectrum disorder, which, as many people know, can affect communication and social interactions. ADHD is also included in this list. Sleep disturbances, and also having a higher risk factor, you know, for all of these, but also schizophrenia, which I think is interesting. Remember the content creator Audrey and her comment earlier about the note at the bottom of the page of gypsy's genetic results.

Audrey: If you look at the very bottom of the page, there is a note that says there is a high link with schizophrenia.

Javier: "high link" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.. Here's what that really means. Five people out of a hundred with this deletion develop schizophrenia. Ninety five don't. And nobody has ever said Gypsy has schizophrenia. Not Dee Dee. Not a doctor. Not Gypsy. So I'm not sure what it's doing in this argument. If we go under this logic that, uh, DeeDee was concerned about her child because she had these symptoms, she didn't know that it was a microdeletion until later on, but she was trying to treat, you know, her daughter. Let's talk about some of these other issues that don't seem to fall under the same, uh, symptom umbrella that, that you mentioned. Let's talk about paralysis. Do any of these people with this microdeletion have paralysis or any symptoms of paralysis?

Kira Dineen: Not that I could find. That doesn't mean that it hasn't happened, but I didn't find any documentation of people with this microdeletion having an increased chance of paralysis compared to just the normal population. So I didn't see anything related to that in what we call the literature, so like publications that have been peer reviewed and all of this.

Javier: And what about cancer or in this case, leukemia?

Kira Dineen: Right. 'Cause, you know, on paper she had leukemia. Um, I also didn't see any of that, and a lot of genetic conditions do have increased risk for certain cancers. So there's a lot of conditions where that is the case. didn't see this as being one of them

Javier: What about the feeding tube? Because Gypsy did have a feeding tube for a big chunk of her childhood

Kira Dineen: Yeah, so this one actually more lines up. So it can occur. It's not that, again, everyone with this microdeletion ends up having a feeding tube. But going back to, you know, developmental delay, and like that's a very generic term, but within that, or global developmental delay, one of those areas is feeding difficulties. And so that can include weak sucking, so more when you're thinking about like a baby, a breastfeeding or bottle feeding of they have to have that suck reflex and be able to do that. Swallowing problems, choking, reflux, even something called delayed stomach emptying, just poor growth in general. So we do see that all of that is associated with this microdeletion. I asked Kira about issues with saliva glands or rotten teeth. if you recall, Gypsy had her saliva glands removed and her rotten teeth yanked out. Kira said there's no literature supporting that. Okay. Let's keep score. The critics say this microdeletion explains everything. So let's actually check. Small head. Yes. Short stature. Yes. Eye problems. Yes. Developmental delay. Yes. Seizures? They're on the list. Kira brought them up before I did. Feeding problems? Also on the list. That's a real column. But there's another column. Paralysis. Nothing. Leukemia. Nothing. Muscular dystrophy. Nothing. The saliva glands. The teeth. Nothing So here's where I land. There's a list of things this deletion can explain. And there's a list of things Dee Dee said were wrong with her daughter. Those two lists overlap. But they are not the same list.

Javier: A lot of the Gypsy Rose skeptics or critics or whatever they say, they point to this microdeletion and they say it-- she can't have Munchausen by proxy because she has a microdeletion. But I actually could see it another way, right? Because I see having an underlying genetic issue as a great palette to start, you know, creating the illusion of something worse. What, what's your opinion?

Kira Dineen: I can totally see that perspective and thought process because, you know, we've talked about that there's a couple symptoms that either we know she has, right? We can look at her and say her head is on the smaller side, and I think you even said that she has said that before. So

Javier: Yeah

Kira Dineen: that we can physically see and say, you know, Gypsy Rose checks that box. But then other ones we're like, was that real? So the weak muscle tone, is that a real symptom she had? Is that something that her mother was really portraying and convincing her of? Like, that's more of a gray area. We can't necessarily see that with someone. So let's also remember that people can have this genetic change and have very little or no symptoms. So it is entirely plausible, speaking from a genetic expert point of view, that Gypsy Rose could just have the few symptoms that we've talked about from this of a smaller head size. I think you also said she's on the shorter side.

Javier: Yeah. So it's possible she could just have those and nothing else. possible she could have that and more of these symptoms that we've talked about. So, like, that is plausible, and I think it is that you could take this diagnosis and say these symptoms that she doesn't have convince healthcare providers she does have. So it, to me, is plausible. That's really all I can say of not Everyone seems to have an opinion about Gypsy's microdeletion.... But what does Gypsy have to say about all this? That's after the break. The 1Q21.1 Microdeletion has become a kind of rosetta stone for the anti-gypsy community. They say it explains everything. And flips this story inside out. This is isn't a munchausen by proxy case. This is the story of a desperate mom trying to help her daughter. Andrea Dunlop, who covers a lot of munchausen by proxy case on her podcast Nobody Should Believe Me, thinks about it differently.

Andrea Dunlop: someone having a legitimate medical condition of any kind does not preclude abuse. Medical child abuse is using the medical system to harm your child. There are other reasons that people do that, right? So it-- they-- you can have anxious parents that really think there's something wrong with their child, and they are going to further and further extremes to treat something that they think is wrong with their child. That is still harmful and dangerous for that child. It is a much

Javier: the intent or not

Andrea Dunlop: Whether or not they're d- you know, being deceptive, whether or not they truly believe their child's ill, that still harms the child and that still needs to be stopped. it is still a problem and it is still abuse.

Javier: Gypsy's friend Bri agrees.

Bree: A mother doesn't lie to a doctor because people will say like, "Oh, she was just trying to get her help." No, you don't lie to a doctor to get your child help You don't put your child in a wheelchair that can walk. You don't shave your child's head that doesn't have to have her head shaved, that's not losing her hair. people think because Gypsy has a microdeletion that she wasn't abused, And so people just try to use that, and what they don't realize is Munchausen by proxy is not only fabricate- the fabrication, but it's also the exaggeration. And so her mother took her already medical issues and exaggerated them and fabricated more. And, um, it's- Her mother's textbook definition of Munchausen by proxy. I don't know how they can't see that.

Javier: So what does Gypsy herself think of this genetic microdeletion. While I was in New Orleans, I figured I would ask. So I wanna talk about the genetic, microdeletion- Mm-hmm ...

Speaker: Javier Leiva (2):

Javier: the discovery of the microdeletion kind of clicked with some of your critics- Mm-hmm because they're now saying, "Well, no, uh, Dee Dee wasn't, abusing her." Mm-hmm. "She didn't have Munchausen by proxy." Mm-hmm. "She was just a worried mom that had a child that had a genetic, disorder, and she was trying to do everything under the sun to- Mm-hmm ... to protect her daughter." Mm-hmm. What do you say about that?

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Well, first of all, um, I, I have been tested for microdeletion 1q21.1, and it did come back positive. I was first tested in 2012, and it came back positive then. after I got arrested and I came out of prison, I wasn't sure that I, I had it or not- Mm-hmm ... because there was a list of stuff that I didn't have. So

Javier: let's talk about that list. Like-

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Yeah, so, um, what didn't I didn't have, uh- ... wrong with me? So muscular dystrophy-

Javier: Mm-hmm ...

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: leukemia or cancer, hearing impaired, vision impaired, mental retardation, like swallowing problems, can't eat by mouth- Mm-hmm ... microdeletion 1q21.1 can be correlated with a lot of those ailments. However, it's not, there's no guarantee.

Gypsy Rose: Mm-hmm.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: And that accounts for, you know, these list of ailments that could be affected. I am probably like on this side of the scale right here. Yeah. So what I'm affected by is I have a lazy eye, so I have strabismus, and I'm ... Forgive me if I'm not saying that correctly. I, I

Javier: wouldn't know how to, so.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Um, and microcephaly. So-

Javier: Which is what?

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: A smaller head than average.

Javier: Mm-hmm, okay. Yeah, because, uh, characteristically- Mm ... if you compare yourself with other people with that same- Mm-hmm genetic sort of, they, they, you kinda have the same physical

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: characteristics. It's, it's, it's some characteristics. Um, not everyone, 'cause everyone is- Right ... kind of different. Um, but that's how I'm affected by it. What I don't have is I don't have epilepsy. I don't have muscular dystrophy. I don't have any of the ailments my mom was claiming I had. So if you think about it, you have a mother that is saying, you're, you know, I'm affected everything from head to toe- Right ... when she's around and present, but then as soon as I am out of her care, all of that goes away, and all that's left is the lazy eye and my smaller head. What I'm saying is I understand that, you know, being someone that has a condition You could have someone with a condition and it still be a Munchausen by Proxy case because to the point it is, exaggeration, fabrication, and, and making the symptoms worse. So it's very plausible that I could have had symptoms in early childhood, but then she made those worse by taking me to all these doctors, and then them performing tests and surgeries, and then putting me on medications that furthered those, symptoms.

Javier: So that's what I think happened in that situation. But to say that it's not a Munchausen by Po- Proxy case is just not the case.

Speaker: Abuse Shouldn’t Be Debated

Andrea Dunlop: I mean, you're going from this insane abuse scenario, but like that is not something people should be doubting. I think that's where it really crosses the line for me. Like you can have opinions on whether or not you think it's a positive thing to sort of elevate someone who was in this, you know, really complicated situation and who committed a crime. You can have feelings about that. You can have feelings about, you know, Nicholas Godejohn and his, uh, sentence versus her sentence. I mean, those are all like salient areas for criticism.

Speaker: was gypsy abused?

Andrea Dunlop: But I think what should not be up for debate because the evidence is so strong is the idea of was Gypsy abused or not. And the debate for that, as far as I have seen, really hinges on some very common, you know, either willful misunderstanding of-- willful misunderstandings of Munchausen by proxy abuse or intentional, uh, misunderstandings of Munchausen by proxy abuse that really just go into Munchausen by proxy denialism, where by those standards we have zero cases. if this, child has some real illness or some real learning deficit, okay, that, that's exculpatory." It's not exculpatory. and again, I think being overly fixated on the parents' motives just sort of leads us in the wrong direction.

Javier: Hmm. Uh, that's, because that's really the crux of their criticism is that they're like, "Well, you know, Gypsy obviously had some sort of genetic disorder. They discovered it, and aha, all the things that Dee Dee did were, she was just being a good mother. She was trying to go to the ends of the earth to, to fix her daughter." You know, like, they, they look at it from that point of view that, that she's being a good mother. This is not Munchausen by proxy

Andrea Dunlop: No, that's not what the evidence says in this case. It just isn't. it's very easy to get yourself in a pretzel kind of arguing with w-what is essentially denialism. and again, I think you can't make people understand if they really don't want to understand and don't want to accept that this abuse is real. the genetic condition that she actually has, there is a huge range of possible symptoms. So you can have, you know, XYZ symptom of however many, and then that parent can fabricate the rest of them and use that diagnosis as a sort of cover for their behavior. And see this all the time in Munchausen cases. They say it's the most rare, the most severe, and the least, uh, you know, detectable version of whatever illness the child allegedly

Javier: I almost think it's easier to get away with Munchausen by proxy when you do have an underlying condition because it's almost harder when you have a perfectly healthy child and try to create all these illnesses that don't exist when you have at least, uh, a foundation to work off of,

Andrea Dunlop: Oh, 100%. And one of the biggest problems we have in this country writ large is our issues around denialism with, uh, science and medicine. So when you look at the sort of mainstreaming of things like anti-vaccine movements, right? and these things have all gone mainstream in a major way, and that is fueling this abuse in a really scary way. again, that is a reason to ditch the idea that you need a psychiatric diagnosis, um, or a criminal conviction to prove that someone was abused. I mean, and I think most people understand that, right? Nobody is looking at the Epstein files and saying, "Well, none of these people were criminally convicted or diagnosed with pedophilia or pedophilic disorder, so therefore none of these children were abused," right? that's really more what this is about. Should people be able to make medical decisions that harm their children? And my, uh, my answer is no.

Javier: We're going to continue our conversation about munchausen by proxy. And how some in the anti-gypsy camp have flipped Dee Dee from a monster to a saint. they say- Mm-hmm ... that Dee Dee was not the one abusing you. You were the one abusing Dee Dee- Mm-hmm ... in terms of when the FOIA records came out, they found Dee Dee's search, internet search.

Gypsy Rose: Mm-hmm.

Javier: And she was looking at places for, uh, homeless shelters for, for kids.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Mm-hmm.

Javier: She was looking for just a way to get rid of you.