The Fallacy of "Shaken Baby Syndrome": The Courts Are Finally Wakin...

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I can remember when the hysteria of "shaken baby syndrome" swept the country, it was being used to explain everything from Cerebral Palsy to almost anything wrong being diagnosed in infants... in fact if you Google shaken baby syndrome it's still full of hysterical propaganda. In fact when my sister-in-law's baby died of SIDS I began to turn a jaundiced eye toward her. But now it seems that cooler heads are prevailing. Courts are overturning rulings based on emotion and the testimony of "doctors" and numerous other "experts." In fact a new documentary film blows the lid off the corruption behind many of these cases.

A new film exposing the corruption behind much of the Shaken Baby Syndrome diagnosis used to remove children from the custody of their parents, and in some cases put parents behind bars, is currently making its way through the film festival circuit. The Syndrome is a film produced and directed by Meryl Goldsmith, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker who teamed up with her cousin and investigative reporter Susan Goldsmith as the co-producer and editor. It is Meryl Goldsmith’s feature directorial debut, according to the film’s website. Included in the cast are doctors and law professors.

In a recent interview investigative reporter Susan Goldsmith, co-producer of the film said:

Many of the film’s subjects have dedicated their professional lives to gaining attention to updated research on child injuries, and to defending accused abusers in court. For this, they have faced a huge backlash from the doctors and prosecutors who disagree. The filmmakers knew they’d get swept up in that, too. Many film festivals that considered including the film were threatened with litigation, and accused of promoting child abuse, the filmmakers said in a recent interview.

“This is a theme in our film—how the proponents of shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma have tried to silence their critics,” Susan Goldsmith says. “And that theme is extending to here and now, to our documentary. I was expecting it. We thought we were helping by uncovering these other medical conditions that can look like abuse, but are not [abuse]. It actually threatens the entire shaken baby syndrome working group and industrial complex.”

"Industrial complex" is an excellent choice of words as it describes not only this issue but the entire "child welfare" system in its entirety... it's become a gigantic machine that destroys families and ruins childhood for untold millions of children. None of whom, by the way, are ever held accountable. But perhaps this is changing. In June 2015, the American Bar Association published an article in their Children’s Rights Litigation section documenting the growing problem of innocent parents losing their children to Child Protection Services based on the testimony of these new pediatric Child Abuse Specialists.

The past 10 years have brought to bear a new perspective to what child and family advocates had been taught about shaken baby syndrome (SBS), recently relabeled abusive head trauma (AHT). Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, highly publicized criminal trials and ubiquitous public health campaigns warned of the dangers of violently shaking an infant. While there is value in educating the public that shaking an infant can lead to serious injury, just because violent shaking can result in injury does not mean that the opposite is true: that when you find an injury, you can conclude that violent shaking is the cause. Ridiculous on the very face of it as it presupposes cause without any prior investigation or medical diagnoses... it's just more of the politicized medicine that's causing the problems.

The spring issue of Children’s Rights Litigation included an article by Katherine Judson, an attorney and clinical instructor with the Wisconsin Innocence Project at the University of Wisconsin Law School, who serves as the national coordinator of legal work exonerating persons who have been wrongly accused of SBS/AHT in the criminal system. Judson’s article, “What Child Welfare Attorneys Need to Know about Shaken Baby Syndrome,” provides an introduction to the shortcomings of the medicolegal SBS/AHT paradigm and outlines why an immediate presumption of abuse based solely on the presence of a subdural hematoma, retinal hemorrhaging, and/or brain swelling must be closely scrutinized due to the existence of countless non-abuse explanations for those same findings, including accidental trauma and natural disease processes. This caution regarding an SBS/AHT determination has become well-pronounced in the criminal justice system, where attorneys practicing innocence work have devoted time, attention, and care to objectively evaluating the validity of criminal convictions based on an SBS/AHT accusation.

In addition to the legal profession becoming aware, thus more active, the film is designed to awaken the public as well, as it exposes the juggernaut of CPS, the family court system, NGO's and the corrupt medical profession for the frauds they are... it also exposes their purpose- to destroy families at all and any costs. Lauren Kirchner, of the Pacific Standard Magazine writes that "those who support Shaken Baby Syndrome in the medical field are part of a powerful and influential group, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome. Before the film’s first screening, they tried to get the Kansas International Film Festival to block the film, calling it “dangerous” even though they had not viewed it." Anything contrary to their narrative must indeed be false therefore "dangerous."

Here is a description of the film from the film’s website:

Audrey Edmunds, mother of three, spent 11 years in prison for killing a baby she never harmed. And she is not alone. What happens when widely held beliefs based on junk science lead to the convictions of innocent people?

The Syndrome is an explosive documentary following the crusade of a group of doctors, scientists, and legal scholars who have uncovered that “Shaken Baby Syndrome,” a child abuse theory responsible for hundreds of prosecutions each year in the US, is not scientifically valid. In fact, they say, it does not even exist.

Filmmaker Meryl Goldsmith teams with Award-winning investigative reporter Susan Goldsmith to document the unimaginable nightmare for those accused and shine a light on the men and women dedicating their lives to defending the prosecuted and freeing the convicted.

The Syndrome uncovers the origins of the myth of “Shaken Baby Syndrome.” It unflinchingly identifies those who have built careers and profited from this theory along with revealing their shocking pasts. Shaken baby proponents are determined to silence their critics while an unthinkable number of lives are ruined.

The shaken baby advocates never take into consideration that some other cause may be responsible for the symptoms. For example, Dr. David Ayoub, a practicing radiologist from Springfield Ill. has found that healing fractures found on x-rays of children, used to a mistakenly diagnosis Shaken Baby Syndrome, are often attributable to infantile rickets. " Dr. Ayoub believes that it is not only a poor diet and the lack of sunshine that is responsible for the growing number of children suffering from rickets, but also the growing number of vaccinations containing the adjuvant aluminium." Of course in the highly politicized world of medicine, blaming anything on vaccines is strictly verboten.

What I find troubling is that this hysteria began back in the 1980's and 90's and it's taken until now for anybody to challenge the ideologues behind it... and that's just shaken baby syndrome- it doesn't mention cases such as the Pelletiers and Daughertys who have far more complex issues. And it's the children who pay the price having necessary medications and treatments withheld so that CPS, a corrupt family court system (with their myriad of "experts") and the equally corrupt child abuse pediatricians benefit in both money and power. Here's a trailer for the film: