5 ms·

> A toxicological screening of the “white curdled material” had detected codeine but not morphine. But Koren had claimed that the gastric contents “exhibited hi

> A toxicological screening of the “white curdled material” had detected codeine but not morphine. But Koren had claimed that the gastric contents “exhibited high morphine” levels—with no mention of codeine—“ruling out administration of Tylenol-3 to the baby.” > “I don’t know what happened in that house, on that night, but I do know that someone gave this baby crushed Tylenol-3,” likely mixed in breast milk or formula. “That’s the only way these numbers make sense.” Does no one care that this is potentially a murder case?

teraflop 8mo ago
I'd guess that everybody involved (including the coroner's office) tacitly understands that even if the baby was deliberately or negligently killed, there's very little chance after 20 years of finding evidence of who did it, in order to demonstrate guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And if there's no chance of a conviction, there's no benefit to anybody from reopening the investigation. The scientific case about infant opioid poisoning in general is a separate issue, of course. But assigning blame in this particular case doesn't have any bearing on that.
- pickleRick243 8mo ago
  > And if there's no chance of a conviction, there's no benefit to anybody from reopening the investigation. It's probably true that without a chance of conviction, standard protocol dictates that public resources should not be expended on reopening the investigation. But I was also heavily distracted while reading the article, scanning optimistically for the happy (under the circumstances) ending where justice is served. I certainly don't think there is "no benefit to anybody".
  - teraflop 8mo ago
    Serious question: if the chance of evidence leading to a convistion is very very small, what would be the benefit of opening an investigation? Just to go through the motions on principle? And what would they even investigate?
    - j-bos 8mo ago
      One benefit is demonstrating at least a facade of seeking justice. Also, obscuring a crime for personal benefit is itself a crime.
      - knowitnone3 8mo ago
        so cops driving around is good enough, they don't have to actually catch criminals because it's it facade that really matters.
        happosai 8mo ago
        It's security theater, like airport security where red teams succeed in 95% cases https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-find-widespread-security-failures/story?id=31434881 https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-fin...
    - brianpan 8mo ago
      It's a cost-benefit analysis like many other things. There are limited resources, they should be spent on investigating cases that have a chance of getting closed. Cold cases might get reopened because of advances in technology or other changes over time.
    - cucumber3732842 8mo ago
      There is no potential "principal" here that is distinguishable from posturing and dick swinging. Unless you find some unforeseeable smoking gun any conviction will necessarily be questionable at best. That doesn't really serve much of a purpose beyond saying "we're the prosecutor's office, look how bad ass we are, look how we somehow manage to convict someone decades later, fear us". Never mind the fact that dredging this stuff up is not likely to be good for the family and that odds are all of these deaths are purely accidental/negligent so it's not like you're going after a "real criminal".
      - radiator_1451 8mo ago
  - mindslight 8mo ago
    The "happy ending" where one of the parents and their three other kids find out that the other parent likely killed the older brother they never met? That doesn't sound very happy to me, but maybe we have different definitions of happy? When I tried reading into the causes of so-called SIDS it seemed like at least some of the cases were a catch-all diagnosis that included cases where parents inadvertently killed their infants (eg co-sleeping and rolling onto them). Fundamentally I think there often isn't much upside to fully fleshing out the truth of cases where parents have already paid the heaviest price.
    - lmm 8mo ago
      > The "happy ending" where one of the parents and their three other kids find out that the other parent likely killed the older brother they never met? That doesn't sound very happy to me, but maybe we have different definitions of happy? While "happy" isn't the word I'd use, that seems better than knowing that this could happen to any baby at any time and nothing would be done.
      - inquirerGeneral 8mo ago
        [dead]
    - maxbond 8mo ago
      We don't know it was the parents. Could've been a babysitter. Could've been a grandparent. New parents often have help.
    - BLKNSLVR 8mo ago
      Man, SIDS. It's specifically non-specific, but the worry it causes is quite specific. My daughter, as a baby, always managed to find a way to sleep on her stomach. Wouldn't sleep on her back, but almost magically by comparison would fall asleep lying on her stomach (face to one side or the other, not straight down, obviously - I hope). We tried various combinations of devices, arrangements of pillows and cushions, tight wraps, to keep her lying on her back, but babies are remarkably, if involuntarily, wilful (or she was, anyway, and remains to this day). I worry about very few things, but for the first few nights we'd regularly get up to check on her, and literally be holding our breath waiting for her to expel hers. Out of necessity the every-parents-SIDS-fear, from allowing the baby to sleep on their stomach, had to be removed from our psyche so that we could continue to function day-to-day. Said baby is now, thankfully, a semi-healthily functional teenager. As functional as teenagers get anyway :)
- thaumasiotes 8mo ago
  > And if there's no chance of a conviction, there's no benefit to anybody from reopening the investigation. The benefit would be to formally reject the fake science that was used to close the investigation the first time. A conviction is beside the point.
steelbrain 8mo ago
> Does no one care that this is potentially a murder case? Did we read the same article? Why are you so quick to jump the gun here? > Koren obtained a sample of Rani’s breast milk, which she had kept in her freezer. His lab measured its morphine concentration at eighty-seven nanograms per millilitre. If this is in the breastmilk, it will end up in the stomach, and it may end up in gastric contents. I don't understand this urge to demonize the parents, who on top of having lost a child, have to stand these witchtrials.
- pickleRick243 8mo ago
  Are you Koren? Did we read the same article? The one that calls into question anything Koren says or claims? From the article I read: "A twelve-day-old infant cannot crawl. It cannot grab, and it cannot put something into its own mouth. “It also cannot swallow a Tylenol-3 pill,” Juurlink told me. “I don’t know what happened in that house, on that night, but I do know that someone gave this baby crushed Tylenol-3,” likely mixed in breast milk or formula. “That’s the only way these numbers make sense.”"
  - Twisol 8mo ago
    Also relevant to the quote selected by 'steelbrain: > Recently, Parvaz Madadi has undergone a painful process of revisiting her past work and memories. [...] She added that she had no confidence in the measurement of Rani’s breast-milk sample, because it had been handled by Koren’s lab. There is a lot to process in this long article. The quote selected by 'steelbrain, concerning Koren's measurement occurs very, very early on, and much of the rest of the article is about contrasting Koren's early presentations of the material against others' testimony. It's worth reading the whole thing To 'steelbrain: cherry-picking one single quote out of a nuanced article does the journalism here a dire disservice. It's okay for different people to have different beliefs and takeaways from the article. However, your own defense of the biological mechanism here is directly argued against in the "same article" you are admonishing others over reading. That is not conducive to a discussion in good faith.
- likpok 8mo ago
  The article goes into detail about how this level of morphine in the breastmilk could not have given the baby a lethal (or even clinically effective) dose. Furthermore, Koren lied about what the tests showed the stomach contents to be: he omitted codeine entirely. Codeine (per the article) would not be expected to be transferred by breastmilk -- it's metabolized into morphine to be effective.
alterom 8mo ago
> Does no one care that this is potentially a murder case? I'd say, a very low chance of murder, and a near-certainty of at least manslaughter (unintentional killing), with a zero chance of prosecution due to lack of evidence. Plus, I hardly see any value of jailing any of the caregivers for this. Whether an investigation should be made, I don't disagree.
hiyer 8mo ago
Not just that, but potentially 17 other guilty caregivers have been cleared of suspicion based on the findings in that paper.
Thorrez 8mo ago
Why do you think someone intended to kill the baby? >But the forensic-toxicology laboratory’s measurements showed that his acetaminophen concentration was in the range of what you’d expect to find in a baby’s bloodstream soon after he’d been administered a standard dose. >“I am familiar with patients whose babies have died after a caregiver gave the opiate directly.” Maybe the person thought the tylenol-3 would help the baby.
- radiator_1451 8mo ago
  Maybe the person thought that, but that would still be an absurd belief for them to hold. First of all, it doesn't seem like he had any problems he needed "help" with, the article only says he was "developing normally". Second of all, why would you give a random pill meant for adults to a baby not even two weeks old, without asking a nurse or at least reading the package insert?
  - Thorrez 8mo ago
    Maybe the person thought "I've given Tylenol to babies in the past and it was fine" without realizing the difference between Tylenol and Tylenol-3. It's possible the person even thought "Tylenol-3, hmm, that must be another term for children's Tylenol, Tylenol for 3-year-olds. I've given that to babies before."

teraflop 8mo ago

I'd guess that everybody involved (including the coroner's office) tacitly understands that even if the baby was deliberately or negligently killed, there's very little chance after 20 years of finding evidence of who did it, in order to demonstrate guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And if there's no chance of a conviction, there's no benefit to anybody from reopening the investigation. The scientific case about infant opioid poisoning in general is a separate issue, of course. But assigning blame in this particular case doesn't have any bearing on that.

pickleRick243 8mo ago
> And if there's no chance of a conviction, there's no benefit to anybody from reopening the investigation. It's probably true that without a chance of conviction, standard protocol dictates that public resources should not be expended on reopening the investigation. But I was also heavily distracted while reading the article, scanning optimistically for the happy (under the circumstances) ending where justice is served. I certainly don't think there is "no benefit to anybody".
- teraflop 8mo ago
  Serious question: if the chance of evidence leading to a convistion is very very small, what would be the benefit of opening an investigation? Just to go through the motions on principle? And what would they even investigate?
  - j-bos 8mo ago
    One benefit is demonstrating at least a facade of seeking justice. Also, obscuring a crime for personal benefit is itself a crime.
    - knowitnone3 8mo ago
      so cops driving around is good enough, they don't have to actually catch criminals because it's it facade that really matters.
      - happosai 8mo ago
        It's security theater, like airport security where red teams succeed in 95% cases https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-find-widespread-security-failures/story?id=31434881 https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-fin...
  - brianpan 8mo ago
    It's a cost-benefit analysis like many other things. There are limited resources, they should be spent on investigating cases that have a chance of getting closed. Cold cases might get reopened because of advances in technology or other changes over time.
  - cucumber3732842 8mo ago
    There is no potential "principal" here that is distinguishable from posturing and dick swinging. Unless you find some unforeseeable smoking gun any conviction will necessarily be questionable at best. That doesn't really serve much of a purpose beyond saying "we're the prosecutor's office, look how bad ass we are, look how we somehow manage to convict someone decades later, fear us". Never mind the fact that dredging this stuff up is not likely to be good for the family and that odds are all of these deaths are purely accidental/negligent so it's not like you're going after a "real criminal".
    - radiator_1451 8mo ago
- mindslight 8mo ago
  The "happy ending" where one of the parents and their three other kids find out that the other parent likely killed the older brother they never met? That doesn't sound very happy to me, but maybe we have different definitions of happy? When I tried reading into the causes of so-called SIDS it seemed like at least some of the cases were a catch-all diagnosis that included cases where parents inadvertently killed their infants (eg co-sleeping and rolling onto them). Fundamentally I think there often isn't much upside to fully fleshing out the truth of cases where parents have already paid the heaviest price.
  - lmm 8mo ago
    > The "happy ending" where one of the parents and their three other kids find out that the other parent likely killed the older brother they never met? That doesn't sound very happy to me, but maybe we have different definitions of happy? While "happy" isn't the word I'd use, that seems better than knowing that this could happen to any baby at any time and nothing would be done.
    - inquirerGeneral 8mo ago
      [dead]
  - maxbond 8mo ago
    We don't know it was the parents. Could've been a babysitter. Could've been a grandparent. New parents often have help.
  - BLKNSLVR 8mo ago
    Man, SIDS. It's specifically non-specific, but the worry it causes is quite specific. My daughter, as a baby, always managed to find a way to sleep on her stomach. Wouldn't sleep on her back, but almost magically by comparison would fall asleep lying on her stomach (face to one side or the other, not straight down, obviously - I hope). We tried various combinations of devices, arrangements of pillows and cushions, tight wraps, to keep her lying on her back, but babies are remarkably, if involuntarily, wilful (or she was, anyway, and remains to this day). I worry about very few things, but for the first few nights we'd regularly get up to check on her, and literally be holding our breath waiting for her to expel hers. Out of necessity the every-parents-SIDS-fear, from allowing the baby to sleep on their stomach, had to be removed from our psyche so that we could continue to function day-to-day. Said baby is now, thankfully, a semi-healthily functional teenager. As functional as teenagers get anyway :)
thaumasiotes 8mo ago
> And if there's no chance of a conviction, there's no benefit to anybody from reopening the investigation. The benefit would be to formally reject the fake science that was used to close the investigation the first time. A conviction is beside the point.

steelbrain 8mo ago

> Does no one care that this is potentially a murder case? Did we read the same article? Why are you so quick to jump the gun here? > Koren obtained a sample of Rani’s breast milk, which she had kept in her freezer. His lab measured its morphine concentration at eighty-seven nanograms per millilitre. If this is in the breastmilk, it will end up in the stomach, and it may end up in gastric contents. I don't understand this urge to demonize the parents, who on top of having lost a child, have to stand these witchtrials.

pickleRick243 8mo ago
Are you Koren? Did we read the same article? The one that calls into question anything Koren says or claims? From the article I read: "A twelve-day-old infant cannot crawl. It cannot grab, and it cannot put something into its own mouth. “It also cannot swallow a Tylenol-3 pill,” Juurlink told me. “I don’t know what happened in that house, on that night, but I do know that someone gave this baby crushed Tylenol-3,” likely mixed in breast milk or formula. “That’s the only way these numbers make sense.”"
- Twisol 8mo ago
  Also relevant to the quote selected by 'steelbrain: > Recently, Parvaz Madadi has undergone a painful process of revisiting her past work and memories. [...] She added that she had no confidence in the measurement of Rani’s breast-milk sample, because it had been handled by Koren’s lab. There is a lot to process in this long article. The quote selected by 'steelbrain, concerning Koren's measurement occurs very, very early on, and much of the rest of the article is about contrasting Koren's early presentations of the material against others' testimony. It's worth reading the whole thing To 'steelbrain: cherry-picking one single quote out of a nuanced article does the journalism here a dire disservice. It's okay for different people to have different beliefs and takeaways from the article. However, your own defense of the biological mechanism here is directly argued against in the "same article" you are admonishing others over reading. That is not conducive to a discussion in good faith.
likpok 8mo ago
The article goes into detail about how this level of morphine in the breastmilk could not have given the baby a lethal (or even clinically effective) dose. Furthermore, Koren lied about what the tests showed the stomach contents to be: he omitted codeine entirely. Codeine (per the article) would not be expected to be transferred by breastmilk -- it's metabolized into morphine to be effective.

alterom 8mo ago

> Does no one care that this is potentially a murder case? I'd say, a very low chance of murder, and a near-certainty of at least manslaughter (unintentional killing), with a zero chance of prosecution due to lack of evidence. Plus, I hardly see any value of jailing any of the caregivers for this. Whether an investigation should be made, I don't disagree.

hiyer 8mo ago

Not just that, but potentially 17 other guilty caregivers have been cleared of suspicion based on the findings in that paper.

Thorrez 8mo ago

Why do you think someone intended to kill the baby? >But the forensic-toxicology laboratory’s measurements showed that his acetaminophen concentration was in the range of what you’d expect to find in a baby’s bloodstream soon after he’d been administered a standard dose. >“I am familiar with patients whose babies have died after a caregiver gave the opiate directly.” Maybe the person thought the tylenol-3 would help the baby.

radiator_1451 8mo ago
Maybe the person thought that, but that would still be an absurd belief for them to hold. First of all, it doesn't seem like he had any problems he needed "help" with, the article only says he was "developing normally". Second of all, why would you give a random pill meant for adults to a baby not even two weeks old, without asking a nurse or at least reading the package insert?
- Thorrez 8mo ago
  Maybe the person thought "I've given Tylenol to babies in the past and it was fine" without realizing the difference between Tylenol and Tylenol-3. It's possible the person even thought "Tylenol-3, hmm, that must be another term for children's Tylenol, Tylenol for 3-year-olds. I've given that to babies before."