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

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

#281

Post by b112 »

p-e-w wrote: post #140

> 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 incomp…

In a world where people are incarcerated on a scale unprecedented in all of human history,

This is only true, because prior to these times, people were killed instead. Or beaten to within an inch of their lives. Local "justice", lynching, mob action, used to be far, far more common.

And of course, many people used to be worked to death. Or sold into slavery. Or die from horrid conditions in jail. Or forced into the foreign legion.

While I agree that something may be wrong in the US, there are many regions in the world where the above still happens.

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

#282

Post by lqet »

cjrp wrote: post #280
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…

Has SIDS been linked to co-sleeping? I thought the risks of co-sleeping were more around accidentally rolling on or suffocating the baby.

That is also what we were told after birth.

My personal opinion is that the advantages of co-sleeping far outweigh the risks. It is much less stressful for both the parents and the baby. My wife simply slept topless, turned (half-sleeping) to our baby whenever it was crying, and immediately fell back asleep.

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

#283

Post by b112 »

lm28469 wrote: post #195
p-e-w wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scale of incarceration is still unprecedented. A reduction by 27 percent doesn't change that. Imprisonment was an extremely rare phenomenon for much of history (as was police, for that matter). Today's incarceration rates would have to be reduced by 99+% in order to reach pre-modern levels, where large cities often had only a handful of cells in total, and rural areas had none at all.

> Imprisonment was an extremely rare phenomenon for much of history (as was police, for that matter). And crimes weren't solved, people not prosecuted, criminals not punished For much of history life didn't even exist, that's not an argument for or against anything

Mob justice existed too. And execution for minor crime, with king's justice.

Modern western police forces, with all their foibles, are far, far, far better than mob justice.

Are people even aware of history, and how absolutely bloody it was, with an immense lack of personal rights?

Fixing what's broken now is good. Trying to pretend it is worse than what was before, is absolutely absurd and laughable.

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

#284

Post by samtho »

heavyset_go wrote: post #200
lm28469 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the assumption that this is plain malice designed to let the state rob a few more individuals of their freedom makes much more sense That's a lot of work, a lot of malice, a lot of hate, from a lot of people, for a very meagre result. If that's how you view your government you must live a really painful existence

It's just people "doing their jobs" and trying to get ahead. That's the banality of evil.

Lest we forget the very systems enabling this behavior of banal evil were created and maintained by perhaps the most evil of them all.

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

#285

Post by aaron695 »

nelox wrote: post #221
Justsignedup wrote: post #10

The worst part here is: He spent months researching 500 medical papers to even realize this was a problem. No way in hell will a single defense lawyer get someone to be able to research enough to figure this out. As stated, how many people are in jail or lost their kids due to something that didn't actually happen. And how many people don't know that a minor bump in the head for a baby could be life threatening, but…

Try that in a court which doesn’t recognise the reliability of evidence provided by an “expert” witness.

[dead]

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

#286

Post by seszett »

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…

> 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.

Honestly I don't know which study you're talking about, and I'm not trying to question what you're saying (such studies indeed often use exaggerated amounts because it's more likely to show effects, but it can skew the results of course) but I just found it interesting that depending on what "feeding them coffee in the amount of 3/4 of their body weight" means, well over a pregnancy it's easy to consume 3/4 of one's body weight in coffee.

It means about 150 mL coffee per day for a woman weighing 55 kg, over 9 months.

About SIDS and sleeping with the children in the same bed, if I remember correctly (it's been some time since I had to read about this) the very large majority of cases happened with parents who either smoke or are obese. I think I couldn't find precise stats just for non-smoking, non-obese parents but it seems like SIDS basically didn't happen in this case when co-sleeping. It also almost never happens with immigrant parents for some reason (even though they are statistically more likely to practice co-sleeping, here in Europe).

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

#287

Post by circlefavshape »

p-e-w wrote: post #140

> 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 incomp…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

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

#288

Post by lm28469 »

watwut wrote: post #203
lm28469 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imprisonment was an extremely rare phenomenon for much of history (as was police, for that matter). And crimes weren't solved, people not prosecuted, criminals not punished For much of history life didn't even exist, that's not an argument for or against anything

Murder clearance rates went DOWN last decades in USA. Less of major crime is solved. Plus majority of it never went through tria, because trial is just too much risk. So, there are not all that many actual checks and balances

That's a multi faceted problem. Murder rates also were halves since the 80s in the US, it's not necessarily the same type of criminality

In other countries the clearance rates are as high as ever. The US is an exception in many aspects in the West, closer to third world countries depending on what metric you look at

> overall, findings showed that the clearance rate in Finland and Switzerland in the years of analysis was very high, in some years of the analysis even reaching 100 percent. Internationally, these rates are extraordinary high, even in comparison with other European countries such as Italy (67 percent and, later, 78 percent) , Estonia (80 percent), England & Wales (85 percent) and France (80 percent)

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14773708187648...

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

#289

Post by cnity »

trenchgun wrote: post #227
itsmemattchung wrote: post #16

> As a precautionary measure, the hospital followed mandatory reporting statutes and my wife and I temporarily lost custody of David. Thanks to our incredibly effective defense lawyer, we were cleared of all charges within two months, during which we stayed at the hospital 24/7 with David until we sorted out the legal procedures. Holy shit. Parents bring baby to ER ... results reveal that baby was shaken (article lat…

>parents lose custody for 2 months. Horror story. If you read the rest of the article, you will realize that this was the absolute happy path in that kind of situation. That's the real horror story: that the default path involves stuff like losing custody forever, incarceration, suicide, divorce etc.

Watch the Netflix documentary Taking Care of Maya for a sobering and ongoing look into this.

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

#290

Post by [deleted] »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #213
p-e-w wrote: post #140

> 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 incomp…

> the assumption that this is plain malice designed to let the state rob a few more individuals of their freedom makes much more sense. Of course it makes much more sense that there was a massive conspiracy across the medical, legal, prison industry, and press to put more people in prison. Rather than some doctors and legal professionals assuming SIDs was a simple explanation for a not very well understood medical ph…

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