• Where have we seen this before? A President’s Guide to Science, in video form.
• A holy union of incentives and science: A car key that disables cell phones when the car is in use.
• Will the hordes of laid-off techies be driven to crime?
• All this carbon offsetting and greening is nice and all, but the elephant in the room is still coal.
• Any chemists want to weigh in on what type of drugs can be manufactured at home?
• When Madoff strikes, no sustainable food business is safe.
• And finally, the perfect Christmas medley: electronics meets art meets taut consumerist criticism.
This month in DISCOVER, Mark Anderson has a feature story on the medical controversy surrounding shaken baby syndrome (SBS). The crux of the debate is this:
On one side of the courtroom, representing mainstream medical opinion, are those who believe shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is a valid diagnosis. They say that decades of clinical experience and criminal confessions—in which a parent has admitted to shaking a child with symptoms of SBS—bolster their case to the point of near-certainty. On the other side, a growing number of skeptics are now claiming that the evidence for the syndrome rests on dubious medical ground with questionable biophysical models supporting it.
The confusion centers around the trio of symptoms that lead to an SBS diagnosis: bleeding between the brain and skull, bleeding behind the retinas, and brain swelling. Conventional medical wisdom holds that some or all of these mean a baby is suffering from SBS. But a growing number of skeptics say the symptom list could come from any number of other sources, from infections to diet to a fall.
While the final medical verdict is still up in the air, the issue highlights the tricky—and potentially devastating—fallout when medical uncertainty headbutts the legal system. SBS presents a clear dilemma: If a baby has it, the “fact” that the baby’s death or injuries were caused by SBS is in and of itself evidence that a parent, caretaker, or other handler intentionally committed a crime.
(more…)
