Tuesday, February 17, 2009
THE ALAN YURKO CASE; PART FOUR; INTERVIEW WITH AUSTRALIAN PHYSICIAN "ARCHIE" KALOKERINOS:
"AND THE AUTOPSY. THE SHOCKING, ABSOLUTELY SHOCKING REPORT GIVEN BY DR. GORE, WHO DID THE AUTOPSY WHERE HE DELIBERATELY ALLOWED HIMSELF TO WRITE THINGS IN THE REPORT TO THE COURT WHICH ABSOLUTELY WERE NOT TRUE, SUCH AS THE FACT THAT HE EXAMINED THE BABY’S HEART WHEN THE HEART DIDN’T EXIST. IT HAD BEEN TAKEN OUT OF THE BODY A LONG TIME BEFORE FOR A TRANSPLANT. THAT MAN IS WANDERING AROUND FREE. HIS EVIDENCE WAS A VERY SUBSTANTIAL FACTOR IN FINDING ALAN YURKO GUILTY..."
"DOCTORS HAVE GONE CRAZY, LITERALLY CRAZY. BECAUSE THEY THINK, SOME OF THEM THINK SINCERELY IN THEIR MINDS THAT THE BABIES WERE KILLED AND THEY ARE DETERMINED THEY MUST STOP ANYMORE BABIES FROM BEING KILLED AND THEY MUST PROSECUTE AND PROSECUTE VERY HARD. BUT THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND THE ISSUES."
DR. "ARCHIE" KALOKERINOS; IN INTERVIEW WITH ROY KUPSINEL MD;
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Dr. Kalokerinos, an iconoclastic Australian physician, set out his views on the Yurko case in an interview with Roy Kupsinel which ran in Dr. Kupsinel's holistic health newsletter;
Wikipedia tells us that:
"Archivides Kalokerinos was born in Glenn Innes, Australia, on September 28 1927 (he was named after the Greek hero Alcibiades, but during translation the spelling was mistaken). Kalokerinos took his MD degree from Sydney University in 1951 and then spent six years in England. On his return to Australia he was appointed Medical Superintendent of the hospital at Collarenebri, a town 500 miles north-west of Sydney. In 1965, temporarily disillusioned with medicine, he tried opal mining at Coober Pedy, but after being injured in a fight he returned to medicine at Collarenebri, where he served until 1975. Kalokerinos became very concerned about the high death rate of Aboriginal children in that part of New South Wales. He came to the conclusion that the infants had symptoms of scurvy, a deficiency of vitamin C, and he treated them accordingly. The Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling in the foreword to Kalokerinos' book Every Second Child endorsed his views. Kalokerinos is a Life Fellow of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, a Fellow of the International Academy of Preventive Medicine [3], Fellow of the Australasian College of Biomedical Scientists, Fellow of the Hong Kong Medical Technology Association, and a Member of the New York Academy of Sciences. He is an author of 28 papers listed in PubMed, including 22 published in The Australasian Nurses Journal. He is also the author of two books on the subject of opal. He retired from full time practice in 1993 and spends most of his time doing private research.
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Dr. Kup's comments leading into the interview:
In August 2004, the five day evidentiary hearing here in Orlando, Florida was attended by many of Alan’s (Alan Yurko) supporters that number over 2000. Some came from as far as the United Kingdom and Australia. The expert witnesses for Alan were beyond outstanding. They came from academia with backgrounds in the science of medicine and testified with assertiveness, insights, authority, and documentation. The day by day account of this hearing is available here.
On Friday afternoon the hearing had a surprise and suspenseful ending. Alan plea bargained to the charge of manslaughter, was given credit for his time served and later in the evening set free from the Orange County Jail. To paraphrase, Alan stated the only crime he was guilty of was not having the knowledge about the dangers of immunizations and not stopping the doctors from administering them to his son.
What a thrill to see Alan along with wife and daughter and some of the supporters walk in to the talk being given by Dr. Kalokerinos at Orlando North Hotel. Had Alan declined the bargain, he may have spent many more years in prison to await a new trial and the possibility of not winning. Dr. Archie and I went to visit Alan and Francine the following day at their home. Quite a bit of excitement with reporters from the Orlando Sentinel and a team from Fox News, Channel 35.
Before Dr. Archie Kalokerinos left for Australia, I interviewed him on the Yurko case. I have known Dr. Archie for over twenty years. I have visited him in Australia and had the honor of his speaking at an alternative medicine seminar I organized back in the 80s along with his colleague the late Dr. Glen Dettman. In my opinion, Archie is deserving of the Nobel Prize for his services to his patients, to Australia and to the world for his great discoveries and work with SIDS, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (or Cot Death); with SBS, or Shaken Baby Syndrome; and the role especially of vitamin C and other nutrients in these conditions.
You may read all about it and more in his autobiography "Medical Pioneer of the 20th Century". See information at the end on how to acquire this. Profits go to the Yurko Project.
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The interview:
"Roy: Archie, it is almost going home time via Alaska for you. It has been a wonderful week plus having you here, and the experience we had with the Yurko case, the freedom that he has obtained and the party that we attended on Saturday. As you know, I have these reports of each day that Don did. You have read them. I am going to send them to you via email so that you can copy them for others Oh, they are available on the Yurko Project website! I would just like to ask you for your postscripts. You have had a bit of time to reflect back upon what has happened. I’d like to get your remarks for my newsletter Holistic Health Focus". Why don’t you give me and the readers your comments.
Archie: My first comment is the incredible intelligence displayed by Alan Yurko. Instead of rotting in jail, he got hold of great heaps of medical textbooks, studied the very complicated issues, was able to interpret them very clearly. Quite frankly, I can’t think of any doctor, including myself, who has been able to sort out these issues so clearly. Next, I was not aware until the case proceeded that with this type of hearing that Alan could not be declared to be innocent. That would have required a new trial and to wait quite a few years, probably enormous expense and continued suffering. So, the judge was able to free Alan; let him go home. But it is not a total and absolute proof that he is innocent.
There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that he is innocent. Just one detail alone, just one detail, which is a fact of admission that baby Alan developed an extremely severe anemia that required blood transfusions. The prosecution was unable to explain that anemia. In fact one of the main prosecution witnesses who spoke so forcibly when asked about the anemia said it would have to be a typographical error. Then he was shown in the records in his own handwriting. So, he fumbled. He couldn’t explain that one factor alone, the development of that anemia could not be explained. It wasn’t due to hemorrhage and it certainly can’t be caused by shaking an infant. So, I feel very strongly about that.
I think the system of law needs to be changed so that the people in this situation if they produce evidence showing quite clearly that they are innocent, don’t have to wait for years and years and years for a new trial with all the expenses and the problems that are involved. I think that is most undemocratic and America, and Australia, for that matter, went to war in Iraq saying that America was a democratic country and had to free the rest of the world where it is an actual fact when it comes to details like this. Americans are guilty of a form of terrorism which is frightening.
The real significance of Alan Yurko’s case goes far beyond Alan Yurko. If doctors took the time and trouble to sit down and study the literature as they should and understand pediatrics like they have never understood it before, they will save a tremendous amount of suffering; they will save many, many infant deaths.
These doctors, including prosecution witnesses, and medical practitioners outside do not have the time to study the literature. There is so much of it. In other words, many of them, including prosecution witnesses, are too bloody lazy, too determined to prosecute so that they are unaware of the volume of literature and they are unaware of the implications that is in the literature. One prosecution witness, in my opinion, deliberately misrepresented the situation. He spoke very forceably, declared quite clearly that baby Alan had been shaken.
One crucial detail in the defense was the fact that baby Alan suffered a severe reaction to vaccines administered two weeks or so before the final collapse and death. That particular witness said that could have nothing to do with the death because effects of the vaccines all disappear from the body in a matter of a day or so. It could not possibly be related. He did not say from the moment almost that baby Alan received those vaccines he was never well, he was seriously ill. And that was a gross misrepresentation of the truth. He was either guilty of deliberately misrepresentation or he had not bothered to study the case history properly.
When someone like that gives evidence that could result in the incarceration of an individual for the rest of his life and hasn’t bothered to study the case notes properly, who hasn’t bothered to study the medical literature properly, a person like that should be guilty of a serious crime and charged. I think the time is coming when that will happen.
R: In listening to you the thought came to me, what recommendations might you have for any doctor with an open or partially open mind to educate himself in this field? Also, there are a lot of open minded lay people and an ever growing number of parents of children or a child that are being accused of Shaken Baby Syndrome.
A: Well, I can provide the basis of understanding in the selection of literature that I have collected. And they should read that and go on from there. They should look at it and then go to the medical library and particularly look up the references in the medical literature. They should study endotoxins and other bacterial toxins and their effects. They should study vitamin C intensely. They should study immune responses. They should study coagulation bleeding disorders in relation to endotoxins. They should be very careful to study every little detail in the case history.
For example, in many cases that I have examined, prosecution witnesses have written the report which begins with the previously well baby when the case notes show quite clearly that the baby was never well from day one. That sort of thing should not be tolerated. Judges should be trained to recognize details like that and pull them up fast. Because if they give evidence like that when the case records show quite clearly that there have been serious problems all along, then they are guilty of negligence and should be charged with negligence. They should not be free to continue to say things like that.
R: Would you like to summarize what, in your medical opinion, were the causes of the death of infant Yurko?
A: Yes. The baby was never well. The mother had many problems with infection and antibiotics and so forth before the baby was born. There was a degree of kidney failure. So, the fetus wasn’t producing urine, which of course keeps replenishing the supply of amniotic fluid which surrounds the fetus in the uterus. Without a proper supply of this fluid serious health problems are initiated. Because there is gross deficiency of that fluid the birth had to be induced. And from then on baby Alan was from what you might call really not well. He had infections. He had serious respiratory problems. The doctors, unfortunately, that cared for him at different times, never properly investigated. See, if you don’t look you don’t find. And they ignored very important details.
Then, of course, there was the final collapse. And the autopsy. The shocking, absolutely shocking report given by Dr. Gore, who did the autopsy where he deliberately allowed himself to write things in the report to the court which absolutely were not true, such as the fact that he examined the baby’s heart when the heart didn’t exist. It had been taken out of the body a long time before for a transplant. That man is wandering around free. His evidence was a very substantial factor in finding Alan Yurko guilty.
Alan spent seven years of his life in jail. Absolute torture. And yet, Dr. Gore is wandering around free. He should be either locked up in a lunatic asylum because he is dangerous; or, he should be made to compensate Alan Yurko for the years of suffering and the destruction, the virtual destruction, of the main part of his life. He should not be allowed to do that.
It should be made clear that prosecution witnesses, if they don’t do their work properly, that they are guilty of negligence. If, as a doctor, I don’t do my job properly I would be charged with negligence. Why are they allowed to go into a court and not do their job properly, be negligent and sometimes deliberately misrepresent things and get away scot free? The system needs to be changed. And the worst thing, and I will repeat it again, is the fact that if they really sat down and studied the problems that are involved and understand pediatrics, as I said, like they’d never understand it before, it would result in a completely new method of dealing with sick babies.
R: Well, in short, there is a need to help raise the consciousness of the individuals and the mass consciousness of the people in our country and also throughout the world for this is not just unique to Florida and the United States. You are having cases in Australia and other spots. There is an increasing number of cases. We were talking this morning to a woman in the Miami area, who has a serious problem with a child that is deceased and had a missing thymus on autopsy and a hole in the heart. She is under house arrest and awaiting a hearing in January.
Any comments, as we close, in the increasing number of cases that we are seeing. It seems the attitude of the legal system is to persecute and prosecute these people and assume they are guilty until proven innocent and with that criteria for Shaken Baby Syndrome, it doesn’t seem you can prove one way or another.
A: It’s worse than the old days when women were charged with practicing witchcraft. And if they denied that they were guilty they would be thrown into a river. And if they didn’t drown, that was an indication of guilt and they would be burned at the stake. If they drowned, well they were innocent. In those days at least they could use an excuse -- they are ignorant But nowadays, this is worse than those old witch trials for there is no excuse. The knowledge is there. And it is going on all over the world.
Doctors have gone crazy, literally crazy. Because they think, some of them think sincerely in their minds that the babies were killed and they are determined they must stop anymore babies from being killed and they must prosecute and prosecute very hard. But they don’t understand the issues.
There is no doubt that it is possible to shake a baby to death. But in more than forty cases that I have investigated there has been real evidence to suggest strongly that the babies were not shaken but the hemorrhages that were found at the autopsies which could be in the retinas, in the brain or the membranes surrounding the brain are caused by disturbances in coagulation-bleeding factors. And the so-called fractures that are found in these babies are not true fractures. That is they are not inflicted injuries that are due to an increased utilization of vitamin C caused mainly by the presence of bacterial toxins.
If this goes on long enough then there will be bone changes that to the uninitiated look exactly like trauma initiated fractures, but they are not but a variety of scurvy. But, authorities say you don’t get scurvy in a baby under the age of six months. That was largely true in the old days. But nowadays with the antibiotics, with mothers smoking, with failure to exclusively breast feed and the administration of vaccines these bone changes can occur at a much earlier age. And, furthermore, it is possible in experimental animals to develop these bone changes in the fetus before birth while in the uterus. They look like trauma-induced fractures but are actually induced by a deficiency of Vitamin C which can affect areas in bone where rapid growth is occurring. There is a breakdown in bone structure. So, these are very important issues. They need to be seriously considered. Otherwise, the suffering is going to continue.
R: Well, Dr. Archie, I really appreciate your comments. As you were concluding, I was thinking of another famous Greek, the musician, Yanni. And we talked about him at the Acropolis where he gave a concert. To paraphrase, between a couple of the songs, he stated that everything that happens begins with a single thought. And you have given out more than a single thought, and these thoughts create. I hope and pray that what you have had to say (not to be a poet) will touch the hearts and minds and souls of thousands of people out there.
Harold Levy...hlevy@gmail.com;