Under the Wire Presents An Interview with Dr David Ayoub-Shaken Baby Syndrome and SIDS

Dr. David Ayoub is a board-certified radiologist with over 30 years of experience in diagnostic radiology currently practising in central Illinois and living in Peoria. He spent most of his career in a teaching role at Southern Illinois University Affiliated Hospitals and Clinics in Springfield Illinois. Since 2005 he has been investigating medical conditions that mimic child abuse, particularly shaken baby-like conditions and multiple unexplained fractures. He has reviewed over 1,000 cases, testified in over 100 court hearings and published numerous papers and given several scientific presentations on this subject. He is one of a small but growing number of physicians who have exposed the problem of medical misdiagnosis of abuse and believes this has become a common problem in the US and many industrial countries, particularly UK, New Zealand and Australia.

Dr. Ayoub and his colleagues have had good success in court but that success has come with a price. The child abuse community has become increasingly hostile to those offering an alternative diagnosis to physical abuse. Not only are the court cases hotly contested but threats have come outside the courts in terms of attacks from the American Academy of Pediatrics and Society of Pediatric Radiology child abuse committees, smear campaigns in medical journals, medical credentials and licensing threats and more.

Dr. Ayoub and others have discovered an array of risk factors that can result in conditions that mimic abuse, including nutritional and medical risk factors in mother doing pregnancy and in early infancy. Rickets, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, copper deficiency, scurvy are chiefly the medical conditions he encounters with each having a diverse etiology and presentation.