Dr Harold Buttram and His Stance on Shaken Baby Syndrome (Premium)

The medical community has lost another great one. Harold Buttram, MD, passed away at the age of 90 on January 27, 2016. He will be remembered by many as a thoughtful, forward thinking, humble, and incredibly kind physician who fervently fought for the health of our children.

At the end of this blog we link to four articles he wrote for Latitudes.org. Two focus on the harm toxic environments and foods are doing to the current younger generation. Another discusses whether current vaccine programs are causing genetic changes in children.

But I’d like to focus on an additional medical topic that was close to his heart: shaken baby syndrome. Dr. Buttram contended that the medical diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome is not a legitimate diagnosis and can lead to judicial errors. In truth, some parents who first experienced the trauma of the death of their baby, have been sentenced to decades in prison for causing this “syndrome” in their child. Yet they were innocent.

I met Dr. Buttram in 2004, when he was involved in the defense of a young man who had been convicted of shaking his baby to death. He had already served six year years of a life sentence. Dr. Buttram spent hundreds of hours researching the case, and flew to Florida from Pennsylvania for a week-long appeals trial—all at no charge. He knew an injustice had been done and he wanted to help, not just for this man, but for other parents who had been wrongly charged.