SHAKEN BABY - NOT SOLE CAUSE OF SUBDURAL HEMORRHAGE / Part 292 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

Medical professionals have been taught that findings of subdural brain haemorrhage beneath the skull and small hemorrhages in the retinas behind the eyes indicate shaken baby. If any broken bones are found as well, the alarms are sounded for NAI or non-accidental injury. In theory shaken baby syndrome is produced by excessive shaking of a baby or child resulting in severe injury and sometimes death. Accusations of shaken baby syndrome against caregivers have become epidemic throughout the English-speaking world.

New research beginning in 2001 and a resultant body of evidence has put this SBS default diagnosis into question within the medical community. It has led to reappraisal of the standard features for determining SBS and infant deaths. Easily overlooked in this rush to find someone responsible for injury, are the ultrasound examinations of a woman's womb prior to labour that reveal subdural haemorrhage in the infant. Newborn babies also sometimes evidence subdural haemorrhage as a result of the birthing process. Further, Vitamin C deficiency occurs today in the breast milk of nursing mothers as well as in bottle fed babies without Vitamin C supplements. Vitamin C depletion increases blood histamine levels causing capillary fragility. Such a weakness in the walls of the bridging veins between the brain and the skull can cause bleeding on the brain, even with the very gentlest of handling.

An example of the new research is found in this Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 9 Number 3 Fall 2004, C. Alan B. Clemetson, M.D., Professor Emeritus, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, La., writes an abstract entitled 'Is it “Shaken Baby,” Or Barlow's Disease Variant?'

In this article Clemetson makes a case that the bleeding of scurvy is due to a weakness or fragility of the capillaries and small veins, resulting from a very high blood histamine level. Histamine intoxication due to infections or vaccinations should therefore be considered as a possible contributor to the “shaken baby syndrome” and infant deaths. A problem arises because routine laboratory examinations of blood plasma ascorbic acid or whole blood histamine are not performed to determine Barlow’s disease or infantile scurvy since very few laboratories are adequately equipped and trained to carry out such analyses. Therefore law enforcement and medical professionals will not be able to determine a correct cause or the underlying condition of the “shaken baby syndrome” and infant deaths until plasma vitamin C and whole blood histamine levels are studied.

Clemetson notes, “Today, apple juice is given to infants as a supplement instead of orange juice; there is only 1 mg of vitamin C in 3-1/4 fluid ounces of apple juice, as compared with 49 mg of vitamin C in the same volume of orange juice. Parents need to purchase apple juice supplemented with vitamin C to compensate for this depletion, also orange juice needs to be supplemented with vitamin C due to the loss during the pasteurization process.”

No one should shake a baby and Clemetson's assertion is that no one should ever be accused, charged or indicted for inflicting “shaken-baby syndrome” or death to a child unless analyses for plasma ascorbic acid and blood histamine have been performed and placed in evidence. That process might prevent many care givers from being falsely accused, prosecuted and even incarcerated.

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