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A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

cambridgeblog.org

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Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#131

Post by p-e-w »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #85
sneak wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A system that does not incarcerate anyone for any reason would be much preferable to the atrocities that are the current criminal justice systems in most of the global west (and especially of course the United States).

Interesting and unusual perspective - we have the one person in this thread who supports wildly expanding the death penalty. Unless the person above is, of course, an anarchist who has no answer for what to do about Richard Ramirez, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Phillip Garrido, or Brian Mitchell. I would say that as imperfect and heavily flawed as our system is, "Perfect is the enemy of good."

> what to do about Richard Ramirez, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Phillip Garrido, or Brian Mitchell

Nothing. Those people are one-in-a-million anomalies. If it weren't for the media hype surrounding them, their impact on society would be comparable to the impact of deaths from lightning strikes. What do we do about people being struck by lightning? Nothing.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#132

Post by p-e-w »

anon291 wrote: post #123
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #24

trully unbelievable, i lose faith in thr justice system day by day

The justice system is doing what the doctors tell them. Broadly speaking If a medical professional testifies that this is the only way, what qualifications does a DA have to question him? Medicine is a profession; thus the professional body ought to be addressing this and, if the guidance changes, be advocating and lobbying to Congress that people start being released.

> If a medical professional testifies that this is the only way, what qualifications does a DA have to question him?

Questioning witnesses is literally the DA's job. That doesn't magically stop being the case just because the witness is an expert. The DA is indeed qualified for this. You could even say it's one of the main reasons the DA exists.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#133

Post by bluSCALE4 »

hammock wrote: post #33

TLDR: There are issues with the way/how quickly we diagnose shaken baby syndrome without exploring other potential diagnoses, and with how severely/quickly we take kids away from their parents once we "think" we have a shaken baby

This doesn't do it justice. The damn name of the diagnosis makes it sound like a crime was committed. Guy runs an educational foundation on the issue that gets over 200 people a year asking for help in France alone.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#134

Post by p-e-w »

mberning wrote: post #89
Waterluvian wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing shook my faith in the medical system more than having kids. Holy cow is modern medicine still as smugly wrong as it’s always been. Every generation laughs at all the stupid stuff the previous generations believed, and then acts so confident that they’ve got it right this time. And as a result you get unworthy nurses making moms feel intense shame for not “trying hard enough” to somehow magically produce milk.

Same experience. The medical system is a reflection of pop parenting culture or vice versa. Everyone was so gung ho on breastfeeding, but when the milk didn’t come in and our son wasn’t interested in a dry breast the only advice given was “keep trying”. Then the shock and surprise when baby is losing weight. We had to demand formula, which was given grudgingly, and left the hospital a day later. If we have another we…

> The medical system is a reflection of pop parenting culture

Indeed. And not just in relation to parenting. The average doctor is constantly trying to emulate TV doctors, just like the average police detective is influenced by what they see on CSI, and every archaeologist wants to be Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. It would be hilarious, if it didn't have such disastrous consequences for regular people every day.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#135

Post by anon291 »

p-e-w wrote: post #132
anon291 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The justice system is doing what the doctors tell them. Broadly speaking If a medical professional testifies that this is the only way, what qualifications does a DA have to question him? Medicine is a profession; thus the professional body ought to be addressing this and, if the guidance changes, be advocating and lobbying to Congress that people start being released.

> If a medical professional testifies that this is the only way, what qualifications does a DA have to question him? Questioning witnesses is literally the DA's job. That doesn't magically stop being the case just because the witness is an expert. The DA is indeed qualified for this. You could even say it's one of the main reasons the DA exists.

Got it. So the DA is supposed to not only be an expert in the law, but enough of an expert in medicine such that he can flaunt widely acknowledged medical standards while cross-examining expert witnesses on why they're wrong.

The author of this post admitted that it took him countless hours to discover that medicine basically has this issue wrong and only after being particularly motivated to do so. If the DA has so much medical expertise that they know better than the doctors, then what exactly is he doing being a DA?

The idea that the main purpose of the DA is to know better than doctors is ludicrous.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#136

Post by TeeMassive »

"What happened is that during my literature review, I disturbingly realized that what I had been told at the hospital, namely that subdural and retinal hemorrhage in infants are almost always caused by violent shaking even in the absence of external evidence of trauma, was an assertion based on very weak scientific foundations. And yet, this “shaking hypothesis” (sometimes referred to as the theory of the “triad”, since encephalopathy is frequently associated with the other two signs, subdural and retinal hemorrhage) has been taught as though it was a proven fact to generations of physicians all over the world. Every year, thousands of children are removed from their parents, and thousands are prosecuted, convicted, and even incarcerated, on the basis of this assertion. Law professor Deborah Tuerkheimer qualifies SBS/AHT as a “medical diagnosis of murder”. The very least we should expect for an assertion this powerful is that it should be based on reliable scientific foundations."

This is why using experts for advice is great but everyone should still be encouraged to do their own research.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#137

Post by dumpsterdiver »

sneak wrote: post #70
huytersd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The welfare of someone else’s child doesn’t register very highly on a majority of people’s radars beyond basic humanitarian considerations. How about government provided daycare and forcing the mother to work.

Possession is nine tenths of the law. It's not someone else's child if it's in your house and you need a genetic test to deny responsibility. This idea that bloodlines are relevant is anachronistic superstition. Several of my friends are not genetically related to their children. It's simply not relevant.

When it comes to "justifiable reasons for leaving your partner, the person you love and trust", infidelity is right up there near the top. You seem to be implying that the victim whose trust was irrevocably shattered should also be saddled with the financial burden which resulted from the act of infidelity. If that's how you truly feel then I'll just leave it at, "I disagree." There's not enough common ground to argue upon constructively otherwise.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#138

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #129
faeriechangling wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think I will stand by my position that the vaccines did in fact slow the spread, especially early on. I think there is LOTS of evidence about the vaccines effects on transmission which points to them being effective. Also think back to before we had good evidence on transmissibility/infection. Myocarditis hit the young, who were the last to be vaccinated, and consequently among the last to be researched. So the…

> I think there is LOTS of evidence about the vaccines effects on transmission which points to them being effective. Can you point to some canonical sources on this? Preferably things that were published in the last year or so. My understanding is that effects on infection and transmission were overstated and very short lived anyway. Didn't everybody get covid eventually, multiple times even?

Everyone getting covid and slowing transmission aren't incompatible. In the no lockdown, no vaccine world, everyone gets covid in ~100 days. With vaccines that period is a lot longer (roughly a year?) even though omicron has roughly twice as high a transmission rate. The simplest proof that vaccines have an effect on transmission is the number of infected people by vaccine status. There have been dozens of studies of this (see https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccine-effectiven...) but this really is one where you can just eyeball the effects https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/28/us/covid-brea....

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#139

Post by AussieWog93 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #75
hcrean wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I can certainly see the other side of this argument though, it feels very unfair to saddle a third party with the responsibility to support a child they had no part in making.

Do you have kids?

I remember when my wife was pregnant with our first, I kept half-joking about getting a peace of mind paternity test.

After actually meeting the kid and getting to know our love her, I couldn't think of anything more devastating than finding out she's not mine.

Honestly wouldn't want to know, because losing my little girl would be worse than misallocating resources or whatever the Darwinian theory would be.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#140

Post by p-e-w »

> It is the perfect combination of crap.

I think that's being way too charitable.

In a world where people are incarcerated on a scale unprecedented in all of human history, and where prosecutorial success is measured by number of scalps taken, the assumption that this is plain malice designed to let the state rob a few more individuals of their freedom makes much more sense than it all being just a big pile of incompetence and misunderstandings.

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