April 02, 2015

Shaken Baby Syndrome, Part 2

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

Is it Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS), or something else? They tell us the triad of brain swelling, retinal hemorrhage, and brain hemorrhage can only mean one thing, you hurt your baby. Child abuse is abhorrent, but so is being accused of killing or injuring your own child with abuse when you know you have not. The simple allegation can ruin a person’s life; so we better be sure when that accusation is leveled.

According to experts, the alleged scenario for SBS goes like this: A baby crying inconsolably triggers the action; the perpetrator shakes the baby from 5 to 20 seconds at a rate of 2 to 4 times per second. So at a minimum, you can do unfathomable damage to a baby’s brain in 5 seconds by shaking them up to twenty times. Is this good for a baby, obviously not, but can it do the alleged damage absent neurologic and neck injuries? It seems highly improbable that that action would kill a child, especially after the quote from the National Shaken Baby Coalition that less damage may occur if you drop them from three stories up! And real science seems to back up that conclusion.

Most of the information in the rest of this article comes from an interview of Dr. F. Edward Yazbak, M.D., by Dr. Mercola.

Dr. Yazbak says that all causes of the triad of SBS must be ruled out before it is even considered as a diagnosis. That is rarely performed, sadly. He talks of many things that can cause these symptoms; here is a list of some of them. Anything that increases intracranial pressure; Vitamin C, K, and D deficiencies; infections, bleeding disorders, CPR; 1/3 of normal vaginal deliveries, vaccines, and aluminum overdose are all abnormalities that lead to some of these symptoms. We will look at these.

A 2004 Study by Geddes and Whitewell showed, by way of autopsy on 50 non-traumatically injured babies, that subdural and retinal bleeding may well have a non-traumatic origin. In other words, things other than shaking of the head of a baby can cause the brain swelling and retinal bleeding.

In 2009, Squire and Mack showed that far greater forces than they could produce by shaking a dummy are needed to cause brain swelling. They concluded that impact of the skull on something is necessary to produce subdural hematoma (SDH). They concluded that any infant shaken so bad as to cause SDH would necessarily be expected to have injury to the neck structures and spinal cord, as in a car whiplash accident or a truly shaken baby. 

In 2009, Cohen and Scheinberg studied 55 cases of children and fetuses that died from suffocation, with no trauma alleged. What they found means a lot to this discussion. They noted every case had intradural bleeding and two thirds had subdural bleeding(SDH). This is key because that is exactly the type of bleeding they say occurs with SBS, and they say it is diagnostic of SBS; it is not. Hypoxia causes brain bleeding.

Looking at retinal hemorrhage (RH) as an indicator of SBS is also not definitive. The eye is an extension of the brain. Any cause of increased pressure in the brain cavity will cause RH. There are no controlled studies of humans that show any mechanical (shaking) cause of RH. No one has ever witnessed RH in a “shaken infant,” and studies on shaken animals have never shown RH. What does cause RH? Hypoxia, increased intracranial pressure by any means, vitamin C and K deficiencies, infections, bleeding disorders and others.

Vitamin K deficiency at birth can be part of hemolytic disease of the newborn. We know vitamin K levels fall even more at about 3 months of age. Death can occur, and those that die all have intracranial hemorrhage and some have retinal hemorrhage.

Adverse reactions to vaccines are rarely ever fully investigated or even considered in most of those cases. Medicine is blindly invested in vaccines and cannot even admit (let alone report to VAERS) bad things can happen when they are administered.

Hypoxia, or lack of oxygen to the brain, produces brain swelling. One common adverse reaction to vaccines is apnea (respiratory difficulty or even arrest). Apnea causes loss of oxygen to the brain which causes more brain swelling, raises brain pressure and causes subdural and retinal hemorrhage. It is a vicious cycle. There are several vaccines that cause apnea and seizures, causing decreased oxygen to the brain.

There are two specific vaccines that cause a decrease in platelet counts. Fewer platelets means less oxygen carried to the brain, and that leads to hypoxia and brain pressure.

A 2004 study by C. Alan Clemetson, MD, Tulane School of Medicine, showed elevated blood histamine caused by vaccines coupled with Vitamin C deficiency mimics SBS. (Med Hypoth 62:533-536) He also said, “When a determination of SBS is based solely on subdural hemorrhage and retinal hemorrhage, the assessment is an unfounded accusation, and not a diagnosis.”

Toxicity with aluminum is yet another reason for SIDS or sudden baby death. It has some of the same signs a SBS. The FDA has put an arbitrary safe dose of aluminum at .85 mg per dose. The vaccine schedule calls for the DTAP, Hepatitis B, IPV, HIB and pneumococcal vaccines to be given on one visit. Combined, these have 1.2 mg of mercury in them; enough to be toxic even by the FDA’s arbitrary standards, which have never really been studied in infants.

Finally, Michael Innes, an Australian researcher has said, and has issued a challenge open to the medical community of the world to prove him wrong, that there has never been a documented case of SBS outside of the 21 day period after vaccination in which a ‘disorder of the blood, liver or nutrition was fully ruled out’, never! He also says, “The diagnosis of SBS/ISII, is a proven figment of the imagination of some in the medical profession and should be relegated to the scrap heap of history…” Those are some strong words.

In the next article we will look at one last cause of SBS symptoms in infants and children, and that is vitamin D deficiency and Ricketts disease