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Revisiting shaken-baby syndrome
By Bonnie Azab Powell
The 1998 Massachusetts v. Wood-ward case, or the "Nanny
Murder Trial" as it was known in the tabloids, horrified
many people. A British au pair, Louise Woodward, was accused of
intentionally shaking to death the eight-month-old infant in her
care. Although the charge was reduced to involuntary manslaughter,
the case's publicity brought shaken-baby syndrome to the
top of infant abuse allegations.
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| Werner Goldsmith displays
the models he's used over the years to study adult head
injuries. |
But Berkeley mechanical engineer Werner Goldsmith is trying to
stop pediatricians -- and prosecutors -- from jumping to the wrong
conclusion. "The pediatricians' mantra is that subdural
hematoma plus retinal hemorrhage (bleeding in the brain and behind
the eye) equals child abuse. But that is not necessarily the case,"
argues Goldsmith, a much-honored professor in the graduate school
who has been researching head injuries since 1966.
"If someone intentionally abuses an infant, the law should
throw the book at them," he is quick to clarify. "I
simply want to differentiate between intentional abuse and accidental
trauma, so that people who experience the latter aren't unjustly
convicted."
The problem is a total lack of biomechanical data on infant neck
and head trauma. Goldsmith intends to correct that by building
a lifelike dummy of a baby, complete with a skull, dura (the membrane
that envelopes the brain), and brain.
Unlike the crash test dummies we see in TV ads, Goldsmith's
model will have full range of motion in the head, allowing him
to measure the motion, deformation, and force of both linear and
angular motion. Working with UC San Francisco neurosurgeon Geoffrey
Manley, Goldsmith hopes to obtain actual cerebral arteries and
veins that will allow him to model the vasculature of an infant's
brain exactly, perhaps even simulating blood flow.
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