PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I highly recommend to our readers this post of Sue Luttner of 'On SBS' on Dr. Norman Guthkelch, the pioneering pediatric neurosurgeon who died quietly last week in Toledo, Ohio, a month short of his 101st birthday. I have republished only a short portion of this post, because the extraordinary story of his battle to overcome the misinterpretation of his work, which had resulted in the model of shaken baby syndrome that has been winning in court for several decades, is so beautifully told by Luttner. She has also provided a wonderful set of informative, interesting links at the end of her post - including photos, profiles, interviews and memoires. A treasure trove to help us look further into the life and contributions of a great man, who stood out for what has been called "his unwavering and unselfish commitment to justice.” Through the story of Dr. Guthkelch's life one can truly appreciate the glaring flaws at the heart of the so-called shaken baby syndrome which has turned so many innocent parents and caregivers into criminals - and has led to children being wrongfully seized from their parents by the state.
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
GIST: "Dr. A. Norman Guthkelch, the pioneering pediatric neurosurgeon who first proposed in print that shaking an infant could cause bleeding in the lining of the brain, died quietly last week in Toledo, Ohio, a month short of his 101st birthday. “Until the very end, Norman continued fighting for innocent children and families,” said Kim Hart, his caretaker and colleague and the director of the National Child Abuse Defense and Resource Center (NCADRC), who shared her home with Dr. Guthkelch for the last two years of his life. Last year, just before he turned 100, the two of them helped a local mother regain custody of her twins following a hasty diagnosis of abuse that had ignored the children’s medical histories. Dr. Guthkelch devoted his final years to working against what he considered a misinterpretation of his work, the model of shaken baby syndrome that has been winning in court for several decades. “I am frankly quite disturbed that what I intended as a friendly suggestion for avoiding injury to children has become an excuse for imprisoning innocent parents,” he told me in an interview in 2012.........Dr. Guthkelch published his groundbreaking paper in the British Medical Journal in 1971, proposing that the shaking of infants, considered at that time a reasonable way to calm or discipline a child in northern England where he was practicing, could be triggering subdural bleeding and endangering brain development. The paper did not propose that subdural bleeding proved abuse, but advised physicians faced with unexplained infant subdurals to “inquire, however guardedly or tactfully, whether the baby’s head could have been shaken.” When he wrote that paper, Dr. Guthkelch launched an education campaign to stop the practice of infant-shaking in Britain, recruiting the help of case workers who made home visits to new parents. He then pursued other professional interests and didn’t revisit the shaken baby discussion until 2011, when law professor Carrie Sperling with the Arizona Justice Project asked him to review the medical records in the case of Drayton Witt, a father convicted of murder in 2002 for the presumed shaking death of his son. “I wasn’t too keen on this at first, as I’d retired at least a decade earlier,” Guthkelch sighed in a 2012 conversation, but he examined the records and was “horrified” to discover that 4-month-old Steven Witt had suffered a lifetime of medical problems that could easily explain his death. Dr. Guthkelch’s affidavit helped convince an Arizona state court to vacate the conviction and free Drayton Witt after a decade in prison. Sperling, now an associate dean at the University of Wisconsin Law School, describes Dr. Guthkelch as “an amazing, gracious man,” who impressed her with “his curiosity, his unassuming nature, and his intellectual integrity.” She characterizes his decision to examine the evidence in the Witt case as “an act of true courage for the man whose work was at the root of the diagnosis.” Ultimately, Sperling says, “What I found most extraordinary about him was his unwavering and unselfish commitment to justice.” After the Witt case, Dr. Guthkelch made a careful study of the medical records in a series of other shaking convictions in which the defendant still maintained innocence, and in every single case, he told me in a video interview in 2012, he found an obvious, non-abusive medical explanation for the findings. “And I asked myself,” he said, “‘What has happened here?’”
The entire post can be found at:
https://onsbs.com/2016/08/03/dr-a-norman-guthkelch-fought-injustice-to-the-end/
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.
Harold Levy;
Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
