WaPo: Shaken Baby is Caused by Vaccines (intracranial hemorrhage; known as SSPE)
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: WaPo: Shaken Baby is Caused by Vaccines (intracranial
hemorrhage; known as SSPE)
Date: Jan 19, 2010 11:22 AM
Well, that's a sad thing.
I thought we were done with
hypothetical psychiatric jerkoffs
in the courtrooms?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/18/AR2010011803490_pf.html
Shaken baby syndrome itself is put on trial in Fairfax court
By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 19, 2010; B01
As a criminal trial in Fairfax County tries to determine who, or what,
caused 4-month-old Noah Whitmer's brain hemorrhage, the debate over
whether "shaken baby syndrome" exists has erupted into a national
battle of the experts.
Most criminal trials focus on what the defendant did and didn't do.
But in this case, the complicated matter of what's humanly possible is
at center stage.
Already on the jury's plate:
Craig Futterman, a Fairfax pediatrician and president of the national
Shaken Baby Alliance, testified that 50 Gs of force -- 50 times the
force of gravity -- are required to shake an infant's brain and cause
serious damage. Kirk L. Thibault, a biomechanical engineer from
Philadelphia, responded for the defense that tests conducted with
adult humans found that a very strong man could generate 20 Gs of
force by shaking a crash-test dummy the size of a 6-month-old child.
Fairfax pediatrician William E. Hauda II said that Noah's bleeding
brain was caused by rapid acceleration and deceleration and that there
has "got to be rotation there to cause these injuries." But Georgetown
University neurosurgeon Ronald H. Uscinski said brain scans showed
that the infant's bleeding continued long after he had been
hospitalized, when no trauma was occurring, and "this condition was
not caused by shaking."
The trial of licensed day-care provider Trudy E. Muñoz Rueda, 45,
recessed Thursday after four days of testimony. She is charged with
felony child abuse and child endangerment and has already spent seven
months in jail. The trial will resume Wednesday, and Muñoz Rueda is
expected to testify that she never harmed Noah, as she told police on
the day he collapsed in her arms.
But the next day, April 21, Muñoz allegedly told a Spanish-speaking
social worker that "I imagine I shook him about three times, but I'm
not sure." The defense claims the social worker misinterpreted the
Spanish verb "sacudir," and that Munoz made the comment as she
demonstrated holding Noah with one hand on his bottom and one hand on
his back. That presumably would not generate enough force to inflict
both a subdural hematoma on the brain and retinal hemorrhages in the
eye, typically seen as indicators of shaken baby syndrome, the defense
says.
Fairfax prosecutors anticipated the defense attack on the concept of
shaken baby syndrome -- "There is no science," Uscinski testified --
and called its own phalanx of physicians.
Emergency room pediatrician Dawn M. Thornton testified that "a child
this age with blood on the brain is typically an abuse case until
proven otherwise." Pediatric neurologist William Young testified that
"I can't find any other reason in the [scientific] literature that
[causes brain] hemorrhages, absent shaking."
And Amy Jeffrey, a pediatric ophthalmologist, said that "vigorous
shaking" can cause retinal bleeding, but "retinal hemorrhages [are]
not related to intracranial pressure," as the defense would soon
claim.
The true battle, though, was between Futterman and Uscinski, who have
faced off before. Futterman, an emergency room pediatrician at Inova
Fairfax Hospital for 22 years, said he'd seen between 50 and 100 cases
of shaken baby syndrome. "This child was shaken, or shaken and slammed
against something," he said of Noah, who might be partially blind and
still suffers seizures. He suffered numerous seizures beginning at
Muñoz's home on April 20.
Futterman acknowledged that there were no neck or torso injuries to
the baby, and that 50 Gs of force is eight times what a jet pilot
experiences. But he said the neck is the pivot point, not the
recipient of the force, and is supple enough to withstand it.
Uscinski said he had testified more than 100 times in shaken baby
cases, always for the defense. "I've never been contacted by the
prosecution," he said. Last year, he estimated he made about $200,000
in testifying and consulting fees.
He said there were numerous explanations for bleeding in an infant's
brain that were unrelated to shaking, especially with no marks or
trauma on a child's neck, arms or body.
Both Uscinski and Colorado ophthalmologist Horace Gardner said the
trauma of birth often causes blood vessels in an infant's brain to
tear away and break. "About half of children at birth have blood in
the head," Gardner said. "Most of them go away, or we'd all be dead."
But a small percentage of babies continues to bleed, Gardner said,
which results in hematomas and increased pressure in the head and on
the eyes. That pressure can lead to retinal hemorrhages, Gardner said.
"There's never been a retinal hemorrhage produced by shaking an eye,"
Gardner said.
Uscinski said the extra space between Noah's skull and brain indicated
he had extra fluid in his head caused by a chronic hematoma, a blood
clot on the surface of the brain that gradually dissolves but then re-
forms, undetected, as new bleeding occurs.
The blood in Noah's brain scans, both CT and MRI images, was in
locations characteristic of a "rebleed," Uscinski said, and that
"there's no real bleeding inside the brain itself." He said the scans
showed evidence of oxygen deprivation, and that records showed Noah
went for 51 minutes before he was fully intubated at the hospital.
Gardner noted that Noah was a small child at birth, with a head size
in the 10th percentile. But at his four-month checkup, his head size
was in the 30th percentile, an abnormal growth rate and indicator of
problems inside his skull that Noah's pediatricians should have noted,
Gardner said.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci