Committee report to the Attorney General : Shaken baby death review

The Committee reviewed the ten medical reports prepared by the IMP together with the medical evidence relied on at the time of trial, in the context of the facts and circumstances in each case. [...] This Report, prepared by the Committee at the request of the Attorney General for Ontario, discusses the process adopted by the Committee from inception to conclusion, and summarizes the results of the review. [...] In recent years, the premise underlying the diagnosis of SBS has come under scrutiny as the medical community has begun to question the validity of the diagnosis itself and has looked to other causes of the triad of findings. [...] This interval, during which the baby appears “lucid” (appears to be functioning on some level), reduces the ability to pinpoint the timing of the injury and contradicts the belief that a baby will become unconscious immediately after having been shaken vigorously, a belief relied on previously to identify the perpetrator as the person with the baby at the time of collapse. [...] The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has adopted the descriptor “AHT” – Abusive Head Trauma – to broaden the terminology to account for the primary and secondary injuries that result from AHT.8 Specifically, the AAP has recommended the adoption of the term “abusive head trauma” as the diagnosis used to describe the constellation of cerebral, spinal, and cranial injuries that result from inflic