Shaken Baby Syndrome: Potential For Many Innocent People

Failure of authorities to prosecute a guilty individual is no justification for an innocent person to be destroyed by flawed theories.

Thus the reason I said that no one wants an innocent person to be persecuted and that would be horrible.

How many SBS children have you watched die from "flawed theories"? Since when do law students guide medicine?

Clearly we are both pasionate in our beliefs. But it is not necessary to stoop to the level of ridiculousness. No one dies from theories.

Children die from abuse. They also die from other causes that can be and are mistaken for abuse.

It's time our medical, legal and social service systems acknowledged that possibility.

As a toddler, my daughter had a marvelous time riding ponies that trotted, bouncing her around like a ragdoll, in a park in Los Angeles. She's never been diagnosed as having brain damage, but she did have learning disabilities.......

It just occurred to me, seeing this post, that she could have been a "shaken baby". I wonder if any of the many little ones, tied on to those animals, was killed by having that done to them. Many cried pitifully.

It would be a good idea, if such a thing might have happened, to ask about it, when a child is presented in ED with "shaken child" symptoms.

I just wanted to say thank you tryingtohaveitall, for looking at the article for the irresponsible piece that it is. The issue of SBS in the court of law is the fact that the art of medicine and the corruption of the legal system will never meet. It is the primary reason that the AAP changed officially it's definition of SBS to Abusive Head Trauma that it is.

There is no new evidence as the new, young and hungry, legal beagles would have you believe, it's all old non-peer reviewed evidence that was published by individual "practitioners" who never cared for an infant or a child that was dying from SBS, and that took on cases for the defense for the horrifically criminal fees of up to $10,000 a day. They won't tell you about the actual peer reviewed and proven data that is available.

When someone can get aquitted in a court of law because they sat on the witness stand and said a 6 month old baby, fondly called "Henry the Tank" because of his healthy status, died because of an "evolving stroke" there is something rotten in not only Denmark.

One thing everyone can take the bank is this; "not a single one of the physicians, practitioners, attorneys or judges professing SBS is a Junk Science would stand before anyone and say, sure it's okay to shake a baby, it's Junk Science and doesn't happen".

Those individuals who have dedicated their lives to the protection and care of children know all to well good people do bad things and particularly in this stress driven environment that we live in. No one should be able to walk away from the serious injury or death of a child because of a "legal technicality" and it happens every day.

Pamela Rowse, RN, MS
Grandmother to Kierra Ashlie Danielle Harrison
Murdered by her Licensed Day Care Provider March 5, 1997
Founder of the Kierra Harrsion Foundation for Child Savety

I have a lot of issues with the SBS claims. My son died from a rare (and apparently genetic) reaction to the DTaP vaccine. It caused a brain bleed within minutes of administration but the Ped blew it off and said it was normal for babies to get bloodshot eyes after their shots. I was only 20 and didn't know any better. He died a couple of weeks later. The police, hospital staff, and medical examinier accused me of SBS and my other son (his twin brother) was placed in CPS custody. The medical examiner found the real cause of death but for some reason didn't want to report it until she was forced to in court. It's a good thing we had an excellent attorney or we'd be sitting in prison right now for something we didn't do. It took years to get our son back and he has all kinds of emotional problems from it.

I have to wonder how many SBS cases are really caused by something else. Not vaccine reactions, of course, because what happened to us is apparently very rare.

[quote=Jolie;3724186]Clearly we are both pasionate in our beliefs. But it is not necessary to stoop to the level of ridiculousness. No one dies from theories.

Children die from abuse. They also die from other causes that can be and are mistaken for abuse.

It's time our medical, legal and social service systems acknowledged that possibility.[/quote]

There was a forensic child pathologist named Dr. Charles Simth who worked at the Hospital For Sick Kids in Toronto. A few years ago an investigation was started because of allegations that he made mistakes in a number of cases he was involved in. Cases where parents and caregivers went to jail for murder or manslaughter. He was responsible for giving evidence whether or not a child was shaken, fell out of a high chair etc. All of this was very big in the news here. This 'Doctor' was supposed to be an expert and he testified at 1000 cases or more. Anyway, after years of investigation it turns out that 45 autopsies were suspicious. In 20 of them mistakes were found and in 13 cases innocent people went to jail. These parents are out of jail now, but the damage is done. Their reputations, relationships, careers are ruined. How do you fix something like that? This guy had evidence lost in his office. Nothing was filed properly...it was a mess...How many other innocent parents did he send to jail? I couldn't imagine losing one of my children and then being accused of their death on top of it.

I agree , and know from personal and first-hand experience, that smoetimes the innocent parents do mistakenly get blamed and sometimes imprisoned unjustly. If we look at Dr. Uscinski's studies he shows there are alot other things that can cause the same symptoms that are commonly deemed Shaken Baby Syndrome. HI s mentor, Dr. Ommaya, is the only person to have a documented study that uses real scientific data to support the theory. After reviewing his mentor's studies, Dr. Uscinski concedes that the studies were based using faulty data. Even Dr. Ommaya admits this as does the originator of this SBS theory, Dr. Caffrrey. No one knows what casues SIDS but if you look at the commonalities of children diagnosed with SIDS and Shaken Baby Syndrome....there are ALOT of similarities such as 1) Occurs in more males than females 2) Almost never occurs in Summer but rather late fall, winter and early spring 3) Alot of these children, have in fact, received recent immunizations

After reviewing several studies and reports regarding this, I see something unusual. I feel that SIDS and Shaken Baby Syndrome, could possibly be caused by the same unknown causes. The only difference in SIDS and SBS is one lacks internal brain bleeds.

There is a Dr. Michael Innis that indicates to show him ONE child that has been diagnosed with Shaken Baby Syndrome that does not have a weakened immune system or a deficeint liver. No one has taken him up on this proposition and after reading this and then researching several cases on the internet....I DID NOT FIND ONE CASE IN WHICH THE CHILD DID NOT HAVE A SEVERE MEDICAL ISSUE AND MAJORITY DID HAEV DEFICIENT LIVER AND AUTO-IMMUNE DEFIECIENCY

You are not correct in indicating there are no "peer reviewed" recent literature. Dr. Plunkett, Dr. Geddes and many others have been published in THE MAJOR medical publications. If you are not aware of these let me know and I can send them to you....they have both been published in the BMJ. Dr. Lanz shared his research at the If you are aware of Dr. Caffrey who was one of the "founders" of the Shaken Baby Syndrome then maybe you would entertain the words out of his own mouth

In a 1965 speech, Dr. John Caffey disagreed. He was
concerned about the possibility of wrongful accusations. “There
are many circumstances in which the parents are totally ignorant
of the cause of their child’s injury and in which they do not and
cannot give a history. The failure of the parents to give a history
of injury is, therefore, not necessarily proof that the parent has
willfully inflicted injury on the child.” Most trauma, he insisted,
was accidental and even short falls could lead to subdural
hematomas. “It cannot he emphasized too strongly,” he said,
“that [medical symptoms] tell nothing of the person who abused
the child or how it was abused.”


The peer reveiwed literature that supports the theory is based on substandard international methodology and too much is based on confessions in which we don't know the validity of the confession, the context that shaking was involved or any other information. They could haev been coerced. They could haev gently shook a child after the child was already unresponsive. They used to say the world was flat....those who indicated the world was round were riduculed and not deemed the "true experts". Guess we all know the world is really round.


landmark articles authored by Dr. Jennian Geddes and her colleagues. Her studies suggested that
hypoxia and anoxia, not nerve fiber injury, caused the damage in infants with traumatic brain
injury. Her observations and conclusions fundamentally changed the way neuroscientists and
forensic pathologists interpret brain injury in infants. In 2003, Neuropathology and Applied
Neuropathology published a hypothesis paper by Geddes et al. Simply stated, her hypothesis
was that hypoxia/anoxia, not torn bridging veins, causes subdural bleeding in some neonates and
infants. She observed that a number of newborns dying in utero or shortly after birth had
intradural and subdural hemorrhage, yet no evidence for mechanical trauma. The common
denominator in these infants was hypoxia. Drs. Marta Cohen and Irene Scheimberg supported
Geddes’ findings in a peer-reviewed article published in Pediatric and Developmental Pathology
in May 2009
hypoxia and anoxia, not nerve fiber injury, caused the damage in infants with traumatic brain
injury.