Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999

From: Michael Belkin

Child was taken from family under shaken baby charges after a bad reaction to first Hep B shot. Then the state gave the second shot and the kid is now back in the hospital. I have sent them what I can, but the baby and family are in a bad situation. If there is anyone in New Mexico that can provide support and get the doctors to back off before they give the 3rd Hep B shot please step forward. Lawyer’s Email is AWC@THUNTEK.NET

From: John Kelly (505-275-8514)

I have recently contacted you regarding the need for information about the dangers of Hepatitis B vaccine for infants. My friend Alex Chisholm is trying to defend a Navajo family here in Albuquerque against a Shaken Baby Syndrome charge. The baby was put in state custody and given another Hepatitis B vaccination and is back in the hospital with subdural hematomas, bleeding from the eye due to a retinal hemmorage and a bad case of diaper rash due to the negligence of state care.

One would hope that the professionals in charge can apply the most basic methods of the scientific method and realize what their logical observations tell them. The doctors in charge are irritated at the suggestion that the Hepatitis B vaccine may be the cause of the baby’s newly intensified, so called, SBS symptoms. Mention of the information emanating from the Internet sends their eyes rolling and they feel we are idiots for suggesting any danger in Hepatitis B vaccine. We well understand the epidemiological arguments for the vaccination of the public at large being more important than the risk of individual’s tendency for adverse reaction. We would just like the individual at risk (or their parents in this case) to have the option. Of course with adverse vaccine reaction symptoms being alike shaken baby syndrome symptoms the parents are suffering a double jeopardy.

I have recently been exposed to the logic of modern medicine when I lost my dear sister to liver disease. Her ascites was treated with diuretics (sp? of medicl terms) and she almost died of kidney failure. She went after this episode to a liver transplant team who, without realizing her recent episode, recommended the indicated treatment of diuretics and her long term personal physical went into knee jerk response mode and re-administered diuretics. She died days later. I might add that her diet restrictions were so severe while in the hospital that several doctors were alarmed at her malnutrition.

Her doctor would not hear of a feeding tube or Ensure nutritional supplement. I have no interest in legal action. I would just like the medical profession to act like logical scientists. Please, if you can send or recommend any information that will impress the doctors in charge of this baby it would be appreciated. The lawyer for the Navajo family is Alex Chisholm and his phone number is 505-243-2474, 505-998-6627, or at home on the weekend 505-266-0651. To answer one of your questions about medical information not from the US, it would be greatly appreciated to have information from any country as long as it is medically sound.

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Commentary—I wonder how many parents are in jail, falsely accused of murder -- because prosecutors and coroners never bothered to look in a Neurology textbook under the heading post-vaccinal-encephalomyelitis. "…Garrett Michael’s brain was swollen at the time of death – a rare occurrence in SIDS cases, she said. John P. Kokes, the medical examiner who performed the 1987 autopsy on Garrett Michael, estimated during testimony for the prosecution Monday that the probability of two children in the same family dying of SIDS – with one child’s brain swollen – is 1 in 100 million."