Shaken Baby Syndrome May Be A Bullshit Diagnosis That's Sent A Bunch Of Innocent People To Jail
Susan Goldsmith, whom I grew up with in Michigan (though she's a few years older) is a terrific investigative reporter, and just put out a documentary, "The Syndrome," on "Shaken Baby Syndrome" and the medical and legal industry that's risen up to promote the notion that violent baby-shaking by adults who snap has killed thousands of infants.
In the LA Weekly, Amy Nicholson has the story about what Goldsmith lays out in her film:
A diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome was supposed to explain mysterious deaths in babies without bone fractures, bumps, bruises or neck injuries. How did they die? A theory arose that babies were under attack by loved ones. For decades, doctors in the U.S., and dozens of other countries were trained to look for three internal symptoms that experts claimed were proof of a powerful shaking assault on a tiny child: brain swelling, blood on the surface of the brain, and blood behind the eyes. Well-meaning doctors were instructed that these symptoms could only occur due to intense shaking--if a parent or babysitter said the child had fallen or suddenly fell ill, that was a lie.Proponents of the theory grew so powerful in political circles, where elected officials were keen to show they supported helpless children, that laws were passed across the U.S. requiring a doctor who spotted any of the three symptom to alert authorities. Failure to report symptoms, even if a doctor found the parents' explanation made sense, could result in fines, civil lawsuits, or even jail time.
...The Syndrome interviews several medical experts who openly dispute the once-undisputed Shaken Baby Syndrome theory. Three major skeptics are Dr. Patrick Barnes of Stanford, who once believed it and now testifies in court against it, Dr. Ronald Uscinski of Georgetown who decries the hysteria as "pure Hell," and pathologist Dr. John Plunkett, who tested bio-mechanical dummies to determine how much shaking was needed to scramble the brains of an infant or toddler.
Plunkett's findings have sparked a growing acceptance that the thin science underlying Shaken Baby Syndrome theory is wrong. For one, the three hidden symptoms such as blood behind the eyes can't be created without causing whiplash to the neck. Yet, The Syndrome points out that there has never been any serious neck damage in any of the Shaken Baby Syndrome cases, according to records from hundreds of prosecutions.
Further, between a quarter to a half of all infants in America are born with blood leaks in the brain, a condition that can compound injuries that could result when an infant suffers a short, accidental fall--the sort of mishap Chadwick has long instructed physicians to consider a lie.
Goldsmith's film stresses that a short fall can cause 50 to 100 times more trauma to a baby than shaking, and as a reminder, points to the adult deaths of Natasha Richardson and Gary Coleman, both of whom died after innocuous-seeming tumbles. Yet the mandatory requirement that doctors must alert authorities to the three "symptoms" drilled into them since medical school has lead to doctors, consciously or not, to settle on an SBS diagnosis without exhausting accidents and underlying medical problems as causes.
This is all very interesting, but we need to keep in mind that it is still not okay to shake a baby. I have no access to data about this, but I assume that in many of the cases in which adults were sent to jail for this syndrome, there were likely witnesses who testified that they saw them shaking the babies. Now, whether those witnesses were telling the truth is another thing, but any case in which the defendants swore that they did not shake the baby should definitely be brought under review.
Fayd at April 10, 2015 2:40 PM
I like a dry baby, stirred, two olives.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at April 11, 2015 11:48 AM
This reminds me of the cases where people were sent to jail for poisoning their young children with antifreeze. The evidence was a type of crystalization that was forming in their brains and elsewhere in the body. Eventually medical science determined this happened as the result of a metabolic disorder. Their bodies couldn't properly breakdown and filter out certain substances from foods and it just accumulated in the body until symptoms and/or death occurred in early childhood.
BunnyGirl at April 12, 2015 10:21 AM
So is this going to be this generation's McMartin Preschool? I had thought that one was enough. Who are the prosecutors that have been most aggressive about pursuing these cases, and what are their political aspirations?
Cousin Dave at April 13, 2015 12:15 PM
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