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

cambridgeblog.org

571–580 of 639 posts

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

#571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are speaking facts, but it runs into the medical problem of “overdiagnosis” where the treatment can be worse than the disease. Swaddling the baby and forcing it to sleep on its back, may have a tiny statistical benefit for SIDS, but it causes tons of problems at a time when people are taxed to the limit of their abilities. We could reduce the incident of breast cancer by removing every woman’s breasts, but that w…

And as soon as your baby can turn itself you have no more influence in which position it sleeps anyway.

Well, usually the real risks for co-sleep are in the first month. There are still after, but drops heavily. Past 6 months (or was it 1 year?) I think everything goes off a cliff, you can sleep however you want

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

#572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that, but this doesn't seem like presumption of innocence. A country with a presumption of innocence doesn't take your child away from you without trial.

A presumption of innocence doesn't mean that a trial is needed before (what are supposed to be) basic safety measures. Judges can issue preliminary injunctions before trial in all places in the world. A justice system that can't take any coercive action until the end of a trial would simply not function. In particular though, cases like this aren't even related to the presumption of innocence. The state believes that…

> Of course, this can be, like in this case, wrongly applied to disastrous effects. But it has also saved many children from abusive parents

So what is the relative frequency of these two outcomes? You can't ignore the wrong applications; if they outnumber the proper ones, then the system is doing more harm than good.

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

#573
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was asked to live the room while he was questioned Is that even legal ? Anyone trying to get between my kids and I is going to have a very bad day.

Sorry, you think in a case where the doctor suspects abuse, they should have to ask the kid while the potential abuser stands there next to her?

If they don't have a good reason to suspect abuse, yes. If the medical system assumes an adversarial position with parents, then reasonable people might rightfully avoid taking their kids to the doctor.

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

#574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough, no bigger offender then the psychiatric and mental health community. There's a very sophisticated system for shutting down criticism and lashing out at patients that have civil rights concerns. They do a lot of mental gymnastics trying to run from the idea that their main function is to imprison and take away peoples rights, often without due process. Medical industry is rife with abuse. They ro…

Your comment reminds me of the Rosenhan Experiment[1]. "The first part involved the use of healthy associates or "pseudopatients" (three women and six men, including Rosenhan himself) who briefly feigned auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 psychiatric hospitals in five states in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. ... The second part of his study in…

In fairness, psychiatry is totally different today than in 1973. The obvious change is that a huge reduction in the number of inpatient beds, combined with increasing demand, have created huge pressures to admit only the most obviously unwell patients and discharge them as quickly as possible. Most psychiatric inpatient stays are just a few days - just enough to get a patient through a crisis, revise their medication and (hopefully, but not always) arrange for appropriate outpatient care and support. The downtown of most US cities is a testament to the fact that, in 2023, under-treatment of severe mental illness is a far greater concern than over-treatment.

On an ontological level, psychiatry made a huge leap forward in 1980 with the publication of the DSM-III. One of the core goals of the DSM-III was to address the concerns raised in the Rosenhan experiment, making diagnostic criteria more robust and reliable. While there are still many controversies and shortcomings - most prominently regarding the over-diagnosis of less severe conditions - we now have a suite of reliable, validated diagnostic instruments for most serious conditions. For the most part, we aren't diagnosing or treating patients based on the gut instinct of an individual practitioner; we're using objective criteria with proven inter-relater reliability, guided by the over-arching principle that, regardless of symptomatology, no-one is mentally ill unless a) they're experiencing distress and/or b) they're causing significant harm to others. There are many shortcomings in how psychiatric medicine is practised today, but the era of locking people up just because they behave strangely is definitively over.

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

#575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but not for the reasons you might expect. Well, 10% of the time this is the case, but 90% ... Mostly they are operating on priors. The prior probability of a separation being the right thing to do is very high, because they have a _long list of mitigation before they actually can take a kid away. In the case of a doctor-approved immediate physical danger, they are regulated into acting on behalf of the…

Priors should never, ever factor into it like this. I was a foster child who was taken from my parents wrongly. A third party (not connected to child services) made a false accusation to the cops, who took me and turned me over to child services without any investigation. Even though I insisted nothing had happened and even though child services failed to produce any evidence (beyond aforesaid hearsay) over the cours…

Have you considered suing the third party that made a false accusation? It seems that they’ve caused suffering and irreparable long term harm. This sounds like something that may have a standing. Perhaps you can sue them and either get some material compensation (if they are well to do) put them through a few rounds of trials in another state or something (if they are poor, this will be a good punishment in itself).

[Not a lawyer, this maybe a bad idea. But what you’re describing should have consequences for the party that had caused harm.]

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

#577

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…

Since having a kid and reading a lot I've been bothered by how clearly a lot of what is labeled as "SIDS" is pretty clearly accidental suffocation. The conclusion is impossible to escape when you begin reading about measures that have "reduced SIDS." Yet I also wonder if continuing to observe this social fiction is just a way of keeping overzealous prosecutors and other crusaders from locking up and treating as depraved murderers grieving families for accidental deaths.

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

#578
post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a misunderstanding of how stuff works. I agree that anyone (or at least a large percentage of people) can learn to do it and it isn't a magical power. But it's far more common for academics to be able to do it because that's what academics learn to do . It's a large focus of the training. It isn't elitist to say "car mechanics are good at reading and acting on the information in car engine manuals", t…

I don’t think there’s any misunderstanding. Your comment seems in line with what I said and what I believe. One can teach themselves how to be a mechanic and pass the ASE. Most go through some course to learn the trade, of course. It’s more structured that way and many find it easier. I’ve never had my auto repair shop attribute their mechanic’s skill to where they learned to be a mechanic. I never turned down a mech…

Fair enough.

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

#579
post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A presumption of innocence doesn't mean that a trial is needed before (what are supposed to be) basic safety measures. Judges can issue preliminary injunctions before trial in all places in the world. A justice system that can't take any coercive action until the end of a trial would simply not function. In particular though, cases like this aren't even related to the presumption of innocence. The state believes that…

> Of course, this can be, like in this case, wrongly applied to disastrous effects. But it has also saved many children from abusive parents So what is the relative frequency of these two outcomes? You can't ignore the wrong applications; if they outnumber the proper ones, then the system is doing more harm than good.

I don't know, but this particular case is actually quite uncommon. I forgot to mention this, but apart from everything else, this is a case where the justice system actually followed the opinions and recommendations of actual experts - except that those experts seem to be very wrong on this topic.

So, in this particular case, I would say that the justice system did it's job quite well, and it's a massive failure of the medical system that shaken baby syndrome is still identified as a real thing by real, board-certified doctors.

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

#580
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I work in child welfare in Australia. Not sure how it compares to the models in other countries, but we desperately try not to remove child from their families. There is very little evidence to support it improves outcomes for those children, and the removing itself is highly horrific for everyone involved. Even in the instances we remove children, we actively attempt to work with the parents to address the issue. We…

How does this play out in Aboriginal communities?

In the US we have strict laws regarding how social services interact with native populations.

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