►February 8, 2004 - A Mother's Ordeal Forces Britain to Review Crib Deaths (requires registration or subscription) - The New York Times - "Angela Cannings spent 20 months in prison, convicted of smothering two of her babies, before an appeals court declared it was all a grave mistake — the murder charges, her trial, her conviction and her life sentence...The court ruled that her conviction relied almost entirely on a tidy presumption of guilt, rather than on solid evidence...The appeals court ruling, along with similar decisions in two other cases last year, constitutes a watershed in Britain for parents who have lost children through crib death and who have been accused and convicted of murdering them on the basis of conflicting opinions, delivered by expert witnesses."

Comment:  One can only hope that the United States will not be far behind in re-examining the evidence against parents now incarcerated, even facing possible death, for the alleged murder of their children.  To learn more about this serious and highly charged issue, go to the Online SBS Conference at www.redflagsdaily.com and visit Alan Yurko's website, the Yurko Project.  (Alan Yurko is in prison for the highly questionable shaken baby death of his infant son.)

►February 6, 2004 - Childhood Immunizations and Abrupt-Onset Apnea: An Unresolved Issue in Shaken Baby Syndrome - by Harold Buttram, MD and Alan Yurko - in the Online SBS Conference at www.redflagsdaily.com

Comment:  It is hard to imagine a greater tragedy than to lose your child and then be unfairly charged with their death (and even face the possibility of being put to death yourself).  While, clearly, no one would want to allow the deliberate murder of an infant, given the many unknowns in medicine, particularly as concerns unexplained infant deaths, one would hope the authorities would be more circumspect when drawing their conclusions, and that they would leave no stone unturned in their efforts to investigate and understand these heart-rending infant deaths.  This is an urgent matter. The lives of innocent parents may be on the line.

►January 20, 2004 - Wider cot deaths review considered - Thousands of parents whose children were taken into care may have their cases re-opened as part of a wider review of cot death legal cases. -  BBC

►January 25, 2004 - Ministers told child harm theory was flawed - The Guardian, UK - "Ministers were warned that the controversial scientific theory Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy (MSBP) was responsible for serious miscarriages of justice as far back as 1996, according to documents seen by The Observer...Our investigation has uncovered a systematic failure on the part of the health authorities, social services and scientific advisers to question the validity of Professor Sir Roy Meadow's theory, which claims that some parents harm their children to draw attention to themselves."

►January 24, 2004 - Parents convicted of killing to have their cases reviewed  - journal article (BMJ) - "Major changes in England and Wales relating to the handling of cases in which mothers are suspected of killing their babies were announced this week by the Court of Appeal and the attorney general.^..Hundreds of parents convicted of killing their babies are to have their cases urgently reviewed, said the attorney general after the appeal court called for an end to the prosecution of parents when experts' opinions on the cause of death differ.^"

►January 2002 - Was the Baby Shaken? - letter - by Alan Clementson, MD (Professor Emeritus, Tulane University Medical School) - Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients - "Child abuse laws have given rise to many accusations of "Shaken Baby Syndrome," which has become a popular diagnosis to explain infant deaths, and even for living infants who are brought to an emergency room following a fall. Much is made of the finding of pinpoint petechial hemorrhages in the retina at the back of the eye, but the existence and the extent of such hemorrhages are dependent on the capillary strength or fragility, the strength or weakness of the smallest blood vessels, which can be affected by many different conditions. In fact, an infant can die with extensive retinal hemorrhages, a blood clot under the capsule of the brain, extensive bruises, broken bones and sores that will not heal, due to Barlow's disease, without having been subjected to anything but the tenderest of loving care."

Comment:  Normally I don't put anything but the most recent news in the breaking news and on the front page, but I am making an exception in this case.

►January 22, 2004 - Cot deaths and the adversarial justice system - letter - The Herald, UK

►January 19, 2004 - Convictions in 250 'cot death' cases to be reviewed - The Independent, UK - "The Attorney General today announced a review of more than 250 cases in which parents have been convicted of killing children under the age of two...Lord Goldsmith announced the review after the Court of Appeal called for a halt to the prosecution of parents for murdering their babies when expert evidence points to the possibility of 'cot death'."

►December 21, 2003 - SIDS - serotonin insufficiency during sleep? - (requires registration) BioMedNet Magazine - Should sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) be renamed in light of evidence for the importance of the serotonergic system in unexplained infant death? Some US researchers certainly think so.