Excerpt from Report of the Motherisk Hair Analysis Independent Review pages 4 - 6:

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Use for Forensic Purposes

MDTL’s hair tests were forensic in nature, and the service it offered to child protection agencies and law enforcement was a forensic one. A hair test can be forensic even if it is never tendered as evidence and even if no court proceeding is ever initiated. What distinguishes a clinical test from a forensic test is the purpose behind the test. If the test is either carried out or used for a legal purpose, it is a forensic test.

To be used in child protection or criminal proceedings, forensic tests must be carried out in accordance with forensic standards. International forensic standards are articulated in several sources:

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•    international guidelines on the science of hair testing (including the consensus statements of the Society of Hair Testing), as well as on the standards of forensic toxicology laboratories generally (including, for example, the guidelines of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences);

•    the standards that are required to be met for the accreditation of forensic laboratories (including the requirements under ISO 17025:2005, General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories);

•    best practices that are commonly accepted and recognized by forensic toxicology laboratories around the world; and

•    the academic literature on the science of hair testing and the interpretation of hair test results.

Although the leaders of MDTL had relevant experience as research or clinical toxicologists, none of them had any formal training or experience in forensic toxicology. Indeed, none of them considered themselves to be forensic toxicologists. Perhaps this lack of training and experience is why neither MDTL nor the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids or the Hospital) appears to have appreciated that the Laboratory was engaged in forensic work and that it was required to meet forensic standards. The result was inevitable: MDTL’s testing and operations fell woefully short of internationally recognized forensic standards.

Adequacy and Reliability

The hair-strand drug and alcohol testing used by MDTL between 2005 and 2015 was inadequate and unreliable for use in child protection and criminal proceedings. I explain these conclusions below with reference both to MDTL’s analytical practices and to its interpretation and communications practices.

Analytical Practices: 2005–10

In the 2005–August 2010 period, MDTL’s analytical practices for drugs of abuse suffered from two fatal flaws:

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1. the Laboratory relied on the unconfirmed results of its enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) tests[2] – a preliminary screening test – both qualitatively (to distinguish positive hair samples from negative ones) and quantitatively (to calculate the drug concentration in the sample); and

2. the Laboratory had no written standard operating procedures for the hair tests it carried out, thereby calling into question the reliability and standardization of all its testing procedures.

Although there were other deficiencies, these two alone were sufficient to render MDTL’s hair tests inadequate and unreliable during this period.

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[2] A glossary of scientific terms appears at the beginning of the Report.