Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cambridgeblog.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 639 posts

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

#251

Post by hoseja »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #246
cornholio wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

In the article it clearly states that shaking does not cause the hemorrhage that's currently considered "shaken baby syndrome". It literally says there aren't documented cases where the shaking was captured on tape/testified and the symptoms present at the same time. It's more likely that a fall (or being thrown) would cause the symptoms.

I read it as no cases where shaking caused ONLY the retinal/subdural haemorrhage, without any other trauma.

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

#252

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

katzenversteher wrote: post #176

This always scared me because I don't even know what counts as shaking. Can you accidentally shake a baby? Can my 2 year old daughter get shaken baby syndrome when older children on an inflatable castle with her jump and bounce too wild around her (she can't jump yet but loves the bouncing)? I've also often seen parents throw their children a bit in the air and then catch them. The children like it and laugh. I'm not…

The article as I interpreted says that there is no recorded case where you can get shaken baby syndrome and the sharking was recorded on tape or declared in front of the police, that being said, if your child has some pathology, they might be at risk with even a minor fall

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

#254

Post by rossant »

kr0bat wrote: post #2

I came to realize that there was a long-standing scientific controversy in the field, and I felt that I had no choice but to get to the bottom of things myself. Although I am not a medical doctor, I hold a PhD in neuroscience and am familiar with critically reading scientific literature. I decided that I would invest as much time as necessary to learn everything I possibly could on the subject. At that point, there w…

Yes, I met other parents with higher education/a scientific background (researchers, engineers...) and living the same situation with their child. They naturally question the assertions by healthcare professionals, they make their own research, they ask highly precise and relevant questions to such a point that most doctors are simply unable to answer...

I remember that as I was questioning the diagnosis at the hospital and trying to make sure there wasn't another medical explanation, I was basically threatened by doctors who told me, "Just stop asking questions and accuse your nanny as everyone else, or you'll be the one in trouble". Apparently, it was very unusual for a parent to refrain from accusing the nanny when she was the suspect number 1!

I actually know one case where the parents (with a high education) were "too fast" in exonerating their nanny and tried to find a second medical opinion on their own to find out why their child was sick. Well, the judicial system didn't like it and they ended up being accused themselves. Their child was taken away for 4 months. The trauma was so intense that their family didn't survive and they eventually divorced (that's unfortunately the fate of many, if not most families).

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

#255

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

Sander_Marechal wrote: post #244
boxed wrote: post #242

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…

I've been made to watch a similar video here in The Netherlands. It's not bunk though. Violently shaking a baby will lead to trauma which can cause death. What this book is about is that there are other causes that can lead to the same symptoms. The video is right. Shaking a baby leads to AHT. But the reverse isn't. AHT does not mean that the baby has been shaken. There are many other causes for AHT.

Didn't the article state that is actually unlikely it leads to AHT?

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

#256

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #217

This article reminded me of another local story about a doctor who provides assessment beyond the knee jerk child protection industrial complex - https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/child-abuse-or-med... This also reminds me a lot of the indoctrination we went through at the hospital when my daughter was born. Despite being a high risk pregnancy we were railroaded into a natural birth. After nearly 24 hours of…

I didn't know that about sids. What a bullshit diagnosis. Our children mostly slept tummy down on mum's chest, skin-to-skin, because that reduced sids chance (and we were terrified). But like yours, they couldn't sleep tummy up

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

#257

Post by [deleted] »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #250

When I was getting ready to turn dad for the first time, I read a few books on pregnancy, children and parenting. My trust on medicine dropped substantially when I discovered that doctors have poor notion of statistics, so they take for granted improper studies results. 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…

[deleted]

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

#259

Post by eru »

rapatel0 wrote: post #181

This doesn’t surprise me. We have massive systemic issues in medical science and care delivery. - Medical science handles variation by simply assuming that large enough samples will average out variation. This loses a ton of information as the “average person” is a construct that almost certainly doesn’t exist. - news media on medical science glosses over all uncertainties in the name of clickbaity sensationalism. -…

> - Medical science handles variation by simply assuming that large enough samples will average out variation. This loses a ton of information as the “average person” is a construct that almost certainly doesn’t exist.

Well, this wouldn't even be that bad, if sample size were actually large enough.

Post reply on HN