Saturday, February 05, 2011

The shaken-baby hoax

NY Times Magazine reports:
As the diagnosis of shaken-baby syndrome took hold in medicine, and prosecutors began to bring charges based on it, doctors testified that shaking could generate the same terrible force as throwing a child from a second-­story window. It turned out they were wrong. ...

Later experiments confirmed this finding and have made some doctors and biomechanical engineers skeptical that shaking alone can cause severe brain damage or death.
I think that they should show that the syndrome is physically possible before they send parents to prison for it.

No comments: