POST: "Witnessed shaking: Reports and reflections," posted by Sue Luttner on the ON SBS Blog on November 6, 2012.
GIST: "Police in Concord, New Hampshire, reported last week that a woman had brought them a 3-month-old baby whom she had seen being shaken. According to WMUR, Channel 9, police took the child to the hospital, where doctors found bruising on the child’s ribs but apparently no brain injuries. The Union Leader coverage adds that the witness is not the child’s mother. This case prompted a colleague of mine to pull out her notes from a talk given in 1996 at the First National Conference on Shaken Baby Syndrome, in Salt Lake City, Utah, by pediatric nurse practitioner Julie Pape from the Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. With pediatrician Dr. Carolyn Levitt, Pape had collected a series of 12 children under the age of two who were brought to the child-protection team for evaluation after witnesses reported seeing the children shaken. These children were examined not because of physical signs or symptoms, Pape emphasized, but because of the witnessed assault. “Those people who were observing the events felt as though that episode of shaking had to be significant enough or violent enough to cause injury in the child.” All of the children had complete skeletal x-rays, and six of them had both CT scans and retinal exams: No subdural hematomas, brain swelling, or retinal hemorrhages were found in any of the children, although bruises and fractures were found in some."
The entire post can be found at:
http://onsbs.com/2012/11/06/witnessed-shaking-in-the-news-and-in-the-past/
Note on this article by Phil Locke, published onthe Wrongful Convictions Blog on December 28, 2012. (Phil Locke is Science and Technology Advisor at the Ohio Innocence Project.)
"This article addresses Shaken Baby Syndrome, SBS (now officially renamed Abusive Head Trauma – AHT), and the so-called “triad” of symptoms that the bulk of the medical establishment and the justice system say are pathognomonic (exclusively indicative of) of SBS. The “triad” consists of retinal hemorrhage, subdural hematoma, and diffuse edema of the brain, and according to largely prevailing medical wisdom, violent shaking or abusive head trauma is the only thing that can cause these symptoms in an infant or child – not diseases or genetic conditions or short falls. Documented, witnessed baby shakings are a rare event. Charges of SBS are almost universally brought against care givers in situations in which there are no witnesses, and the determination of SBS rests solely upon a medical opinion. Prof. Deborah Tuerkheimer of DePaul University has said that a “post mortem determination of SBS is essentially a medical diagnosis of murder.” Sue Luttner is editor of a blog called OnSBS (www.onsbs.com), and has written a very interesting article about a medical team in Minnesota that was able to conduct in-depth medical evaluations of 12 infants that were witnessed to be violently shaken. In none of the 12 cases did they find any “triad” symptoms; although, in some cases, there were other signs of abuse (e.g. broken bones). This would tend to call into question the exclusive link between “shaking” and the “triad”. In fact, there is a cadre of bio-mechanical experts who state that it’s not possible to shake an infant hard enough to cause triad symptoms; at least not without also causing cervical spine injury."
Phil Locke's comments can be found at:
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2012/12/28/witnessed-baby-shakings-shaken-baby-syndrome/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.
Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
