Iain’s Blog

Why is that the clever ones always seem to think they know best???

They must be experts……Anyway read on

Interesting perspective……Life Explained

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican fishing village.
A tourist complimented the local fishermen on the quality of their fish and asked
how long it took him to catch them.

“Not very long.” they answered in unison.
“Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more?”
The fishermen explained that their small catches were sufficient to meet their needs and those of their families.

“We sleep late, fish a little, play with our children,
and take siestas with our wives.
In the evenings, we go into the village to see our friends,
have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs.
We have a full life.”

The tourist interrupted,
“I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you!
You should start by fishing longer every day.
You can then sell the extra fish you catch.
With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat.”

“And after that?”
“With the extra money the larger boat will bring,
you can buy a second one and a third one
and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers..
Instead of selling your fish to a middle man,
you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants
and maybe even open your own plant.

You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City ,
Los Angeles , or even New York City !

From there you can direct your huge new enterprise.”

“How long would that take?”
“Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years.” replied the tourist.
“And after that?”

“Afterwards? Well my friend, that’s when it gets really intere sting, ”
answered the tourist, laughing. “When your business gets really big,
you can start buying and selling stocks and make millions!“

“Millions? Really? And after that?” asked the fishermen.

“After that you’ll be able to retire,
live in a tiny village near the coast,
sleep late, play with your children,
catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife
and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends.“

“That’s what I am doing now !!” Replied the fisherman

Pesky experts………

Bueno Nochas Amigos -I think its spelt like that before you write in! Bit rusty with my Spainish!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

The Story of “Tom”

Tom was 27 when he was convicted and charged with shaking a two year old child to death. Tom had no prior record and was in fact, an outstanding citizen and made a living saving the lives of others as he was an EMT. Tom has two daughters to whom he was a single father to. Tom met a woman and the relationship escalated very quickly to where she moved in with him along with her young son. Tom didn’t know much about this woman other than she had some medical issues and had a prior run in with the law. He also knew this woman hadn’t been the ideal mother to her son and her son was cared for by many others.

One night when Tom was on his 24 hour shift, the mother called him several times to state the child, Mark, was not feeling well, was whiny and spiked a fever. Tom told her to give Mark some Motrin. Tom was late returning home in the morning and the mother was angry and upset as she wasn’t able to take her pain medicine and the stress of three young kids were getting to her. When Tom arrived home, they fought and they fought again later. Eventually, the mom left with the two girls to run an errand and Mark stayed home with Tom. Within 20 minutes, Mark fell off a counter and started seizing. Tom called 911 and Mark eventually passed away.

Immediately, the doctors at the second hospital ruled foul play and accused Tom of shaking, beating or strangling the child. The family did not provide adequate information surrounding the background of Mark’s medical condition. Mark was in and out of ER’s and doctor’s offices well over 30 times and had asthma. Needless to say, an exhaustive search into possible underlying conditions was never looked into due to the biases of the doctors immediately ruling abuse in spite of Tom having no criminal history, no problems with his own children or no issues from his first marriage with the child from his ex-wife.

Due to the generous support of doctor’s, four have provided an alternative diagnosis surrounding Mark’s untimely and sad death. These doctors have provided their pro bono assistance but more needs to be raised to help fund more doctors who cannot provide pro bono assistance. Tom is currently serving a 30 year sentence and his case is in the appeal process but through the public defender’s office. Tom is indigent and relies solely on his elderly parents to help fund his commissary, bring his daughters to visitation and to write to him. This is another case of true abuse and neglect of those wrongly accused.

More information will be provided but caution has to be utilized as the case is still open. If you are able to donate to his case, it will be greatly appreciated!

Its Iain now - what is scarey, another upstanding citizen is found guilty, yet things may point elsewhere if anywhere at all. If you are left holding the baby you are truly left holding the can.

But they still aren’t learning, too many Doctors are going down the unproven road - a desire to be a hero and stop nasty child abusers? You can only be a hero if you actually send someone guilty to prison - if you send the innocent - well then guess what…you are the abusers.

Stop, think, look (for the real evidence).

Oh and …

if you want to be a hero…they don’t charge…….

Hi,

This is the report been around a while now that has taken recorded falls in hospital of babies/infants, now if this happened if your home you would be nicked, charged and convicted as the same old same old experts would be wheeled out, and that would be that…read on and see what some people who are making an effort to look for facts and not funds (for personal use)….

Affiliations:

Ms Caroline Ruddick, Midwifery Manager, Directorate of Women’s ServicesDr Martin Ward Platt, Consultant Paediatrician, Directorate of Women’s ServicesDr Camille Lazaro, Consultant Paediatrician, Department of Child Health

Corresponding author:

Dr Martin Ward PlattWard 35Royal Victoria Infirmary,Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4LPTele: 0191 282 5197Fax: 0191 282 5038E mail: m.p.ward-platt@ncl.ac.ukJuly 7, 2009 as 10.1136/adc.2008.143131

Head trauma outcomes of verifiable falls in newborn babies

Abstract

Eleven newborn babies of normal weights sustained falls onto a hard surface in hospital. The one baby who fell from over a metre sustained clinical and radiological trauma and encephalopathy, with a skull fracture and cerebral contusion. No other baby demonstrated neurological signs despite the presence of parietal skull fractures in four of six who were X-rayed; only two babies had scalp swelling. The findings suggest that parietal fractures can result from very low level falls and scalp swelling is a poor marker for underlying fracture.

Introduction

The conditions under which very young infants can sustain skull fractures can be contentious, but are clearly important in determining whether an injury might be consistent with the history given.Studies of linear skull fractures and external evidence of skull injury have mostly focused on falls of 3 feet or more1 2, so there is little information on the outcomes of lower level falls. In the context of the accident and emergency department, the prevarication and false histories that are part of thepresentation of child abuse create difficulties for clinicians and researchers alike.

Therefore, we believed it would be useful to present our experience of injuries sustained from falls in newborn babies in the postnatal ward where the fall occurred under verifiable conditions, or was witnessed by someone other than the mother; there was information about the physical environment; immediate medical assessment was available; and many of the falls were from heights as low as 0.5m.

Method

We used our adverse event register, cross checked with the codings for all trauma in newborn babies from the Hospital Episode Statistics, to identify cases where babies fell accidentally to the floor in our maternity unit for the five years January 1999 to December 2003. The records for each child were examined; details of the height to impact, nature of the surface struck, clinical symptoms and the results of any imaging were identified for each child.

Results

The details of the babies are given in the table. 11 babies were identified, seven girls and four boys,all born at term. Birth weights ranged from 2.1 kg to 3.8 kg. Of the 11, seven were totally breast fed, three artificially fed and one mixed fed. Seven of the falls occurred at night, between the hours of 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. Four babies dropped to the floor when their mothers fell asleep following breast feeding.

The estimated distance to impact in most babies was one metre or less. One baby fell about 1.2m. The surface impacted upon in all falls consisted of vinyl tiles laid upon concrete with an intervening solid screed.No clinical findings were identified in eight of the eleven babies. Of the three with clinical findings,one had a bruise over the temporal area, one had a swelling over the parietal area and one had signs of traumatic encephalopathy.

All imaging was at the discretion of the attending physicians. Six of the eleven babies had skull Xrays, one had a CT scan (but no skull X-ray), and two an ultrasound scan. Of the six with X-rays, five had no scalp swelling, but three of these five had a solitary linear parietal skull fracture. Three of the eleven babies had localised scalp swelling, of which two were imaged and each of these had asingle linear parietal fracture. The baby who fell 1.2m had a fronto-parietal contusion beneath the fracture, and had a transiently decreased level of consciousness consistent with a mild traumatic encephalopathy; this baby was born by normal vaginal delivery.

Discussion

Our observations demonstrate that low height falls of under a metre can cause a linear skull fracture, and such skull fractures are not necessarily accompanied by a boggy swelling in the overlying scalp. However not all babies were radiographed so we cannot make any estimate of the rate of fracture among babies who fall.All the fractures, including that caused by the highest fall, were linear and confined to the parietes. Even the baby falling further, and sustaining brain contusion, had a linear fracture, not a more complex one. Although this finding supports the contention that complex, stellate or occipital fractures do not arise from simple domestic falls3 we cannot rule out the possibility that otherkinds of fracture could result from falls such as we have seen.In spite of the fact that hospital floors are particularly hard and unyielding, we found that symptoms suggestive of underlying brain injury (decreased consciousness, feeding problems, irritability,seizures or apnoea) were not found in 10 of 11 babies, even when fractures were found to have occurred. Existing biomechanical evidence suggests that that there is little difference in the effects of falls onto a hard floor or a carpeted domestic floor 4.

We conclude that even very low level falls may produce linear skull fractures, but that such fractures may occur without the scalp swelling traditionally considered suggestive of a fracture.

References

1. Greenes, D. S., Schutzman, S A. Infants with isolated skull fracture: what are their clinicalcharacteristics, and do they require hospitalization? Annals of Emergency Medicine. 1997;30:253-9.

2. Johnson, K., Fischer, T., Chapman, S., Wilson, B. Accidental head injuries in children under 5years of age. Clinical Radiology 2005;60:464-8.

3. Hobbs, C.J. Skull Fracture and the diagnosis of abuse. Archives of Disease in Childhood1984;59:246-52.

4. Coats, B., Margulies, S. S. Potential for head injuries in infants from low-height falls. Journalof Neurosurgery: Pediatrics 2008;2:321-30.

A recent editorial in Reason Online discusses Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS). Over the past twenty-plus years, the SBS diagnosis has supported homicide verdicts in cases involving otherwise unexplained infant deaths. In many of these cases, the only evidence to establish a defendant’s guilt has been the testimony of a physician who opined that the baby’s death was caused by shaking so violent it was the equivalent of dropping the child from a 2-story window, or being hit by a car going 35 miles per hour. In such cases, even with no direct evidence the defendant had ever harmed the child (much less violently shaken it), juries have convicted loving caretakers of murder. The testimony was based upon a finding of 3 separate physical symptoms–bleeding at the back of the eye, bleeding in the protective area of the brain, and brain swelling—which doctors and other child protective believed could only have been caused by violent shaking. But now, science is slowly realizing the terrible truth that, in fact, that conclusion is simply not true. Modern research (using lifelike dolls) has shown that vigorous human shaking produces bleeding similar to that of only a 2-foot to 3-foot fall. Furthermore, researchers were unable to reproduce symptoms with the severity of those typically seen in SBS death by shaking the dolls. In other words, what had been accepted as medical doctrine simply does not hold up.
This tide of events is having an impact in cases of innocence. Last January, a Wisconsin appeals court granted a new trial to Audrey Edmunds, who was convicted of murdering her infant following expert testimony that the baby died as a result of SBS. All charges were withdrawn by the government six months later, citing the “interests of justice for the victims” and the toll of a potential retrial on the family. Ms. Edmunds had served 11 years in prison.
This month’s Washington University Law Review features an article in which Professor Teurkheimer, of DePaul University Law, argues that due to the lack of sound medical research the courts should perform a review of SBS cases.
Discover Magazine featured an article last year, ‘Does Shaken Baby Syndrome Really Exist?’ in which both sides of scientific debate are discussed. Ronald Uscinski, a clinical assistant professor of neurosurgery at Georgetown Hospital and George Washington University, said in this article, “this is not to say that child abuse does not exist. I have witnessed such cases and have been deeply and painfully moved by the plight of innocents who have been injured or even killed….And yet I am no less moved by the plight of the wrongfully accused (and even convicted), their families and their loved ones. This is particularly so when such accusations are based on impure science, a flawed legal foundation, and completely inadequate or inappropriate public policy.”
The concern is that there are likely many innocent people currently in prison based on convictions that relied upon a faulty diagnosis. Scientific testing/research has cast increasingly significant doubt on the SBS diagnosis. The time has come for our legal system to revisit the appropriateness of its application, and the convictions that have resulted from it.