241–250 of 639 posts
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
Here in Sweden this child abduction idiocy is upheld by three doctors who all refer to each other as the experts proving baby shaking is real. It's a disgrace.
Amazing that bit about child welfare organisations fighting against the science, when clearly taking children away based on false accusations is clearly far worse for the child’s welfare, not to mention the parents’! It’s just incredible the injustice that can be done in the name of protecting children. I really do wonder if it’s cultural or some kind of innate psychological irrarionality that seems stronger in some…
> Amazing that bit about child welfare organisations fighting against the science, when clearly taking children away based on false accusations is clearly far worse for the child’s welfare, not to mention the parents’! This is just speculation, but I bet those groups (or their members) aren't always calmly and coolly trying to find the best policies protect the welfare of children. Instead they feel themselves on a k…
For the people in child welfare organizations, for social workers, for doctors, for police, for judges to change their mind about current and future decisions requires them to change their mind about past decisions. The necessary implication is that many of the people they have persecuted in the past were, in fact, innocent. It requires them to admit that they personally have likely caused untold suffering to parents, caretakers, and children.
This is hard for anyone; but if you've lived your life trying to be the hero, feeling good about swooping in and rescuing children from the clutches of evil villains, how can you face the fact that you are the evil villain in so many children's stories?
You might call this the Paradox of Judgment: If you don't say that something is that bad, then lots of people don't think it's a big deal and don't do anything about it. But if you do say that something is really bad, then there develop all these pathologies of denialism around it.
Here in Sweden I had to watch a video warning against baby shaking when my wife was pregnant with my first child. After seeing this horrible video, I waited a few hours to tell my wife that this entire thing was total bunk, and we've known it's been bunk for many years. Here in Sweden this child abduction idiocy is upheld by three doctors who all refer to each other as the experts proving baby shaking is real. It's a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can’t you just get a paternity test online? Otherwise that’s an insane situation, do they expect a dad to raise a kid that is not his?
It's not insane. Genetic lineage is the least important factor in whether or not a given kid is "yours".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similar case in Denmark/Romania where a baby was taken from his romanian parents because of the shaken baby syndrome, parents spent time in jail, but the hemorage continued over time so they had to concede it wasn't the shaken baby syndromd.
The trouble is: shaken baby syndrome is real and well documented. Because the crime is so abhorrent, people strongly want to believe the diagnostic tools to be much more sensitive and accurate than they really seem to be. It's the classic "N guilty men" problem, aka Blackstone's ratio: if you risk putting one innocent person in jail, how many guilty people you need to catch to make it morally justifiable? 5, 10? 100?…
It's more likely that a fall (or being thrown) would cause the symptoms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maternal milk is better than formula in every possible way and there is a perfect scientific consensus around this. Formula is the least worst substitute to maternal milk but going around and screaming that formula is perfectly fine, as if it was as good (or even better!) than maternal milk is denying some very well-established piece of science for likely ideological reasons.
And this is what I'm talking about - Clearly, you've never been a mother who can't produce milk for her child. I've been there with my wife and I'm only the husband. Everything you say is true, but by saying this and in this manner, you lack empathy. You sound just like the mommy blogs and their followers that I'm speaking against who spout facts with no room for life's situations. My wife sincerely believed she was…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they feel themselves on a kind of righteous moral crusade They see a lot of bad stuff which causes them to have a difficult time admitting that sometimes bad stuff just happens on it's own Reminds me of the police/detectives that "just know he did it" because they don't understand that people grieve differently. I really empathize with the people that don't have a meltdown and cry when they hear some horrific news.…
That actually happened to me, not with the police though, but with social workers. I explained the situation in a very calm, concise, and perhaps emotionally detached manner because this is just my personality. They wrote in their report that they found it strange that "I almost did not cry during the interview", which they said was the main reason they would recommend to put David in foster care. The guilt of knowin…
> As a precautionary measure, the hospital followed mandatory reporting statutes and my wife and I temporarily lost custody of David. Are people absolutely nuts? Is this just a thing in France or is this elsewhere in Europe or even the US? You're actively encouraging people to not bring their children to the ER by doing this crazy nonsense.
Most parents don't realize that anytime they interact with a medical doctor (or another professional), they interact with someone who was trained to detect "signs of abuse", which basically can be anything out of the ordinary. They are required by law to report any suspicion of abuse, and they can be prosecuted if they fail to do so. The incentives are pretty clear. Unfortunately, while this obviously protects some children, there are adverse effects such as an enormous waste of human and financial resources to unsubstantiated reports [2].
To quote Wikipedia (this is more generally about hotline calls but this also affects healthcare professionals):
"There are approximately 3.6 million calls each year nationwide (..) affecting on average 1 out of 10 U.S. families with children under the age of 18 each year (there are 32.2 million such families). (...) Of those substantiated, over half are minor situations and many are situations where the worker thinks something may happen in the future.
Each year, approximately 85% of hotline calls either do not warrant investigation or are not substantiated. Approximately 78% of all investigations are unsubstantiated and approximately 22% are substantiated, with around 9% where "alternative responses" are offered in some states, which have a focus on working with the family to address issues rather than confirming maltreatment."
On this topic, I highly recommend "Take Care of Maya" on Netflix.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_reporting_in_the_Uni...
[2] https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/50/1/Articles/50-1_...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on...
I remember one classic one is the "no coffee when pregnant", the study says this causes problems, the test was performed on rats and by feeding them coffee in the amount of 3/4 of their body weight. We can agree that with this amount, it's reasonable it could cause problems. Very different from one cup of coffee though.
The other study that was done is about Amniocentesis, this one is more interesting the chance of miscarriage is considered 0.1% but this was before the operation was performed with a live ultrasound to look at the needle while performing it, which (probably) makes a big difference. Before, doctors performed an ultrasound and then went in blind.
There was also a serious bias towards a certain type of population. But of course doctors don't bring this up at all.
Last thing is sids, it's a terrible type of diagnosis that pushes parents against the instinct of sleeping with their children, even though this is commonly done in non-western cultures and can save a lot of pain to the parents and give a lot of security to the child. Do your research though, medical community reports risks and I'm no doctor, just a dad who read a few books.
Glad my children are healthy. Every time I read about some illness for children I feel an incredible weight on my heart