Death of baby decapitated in metro Atlanta hospital ruled homicide, ME confirms
Death of baby decapitated in metro Atlanta hospital ruled homicide, ME confirms
According to a lawsuit filed by the parents, the baby became stuck during labor and the doctor began pulling.
Surgical tech here. Can't really comment on the clinical justification for what's going on here cuz 1) I'm just a tech; and 2) I wasn't there; but I’ve done a metric fuck-ton of c-sections, so figured I'd chime in with some behind-the-scenes insight. C-sections can be brutal as hell. Never been in on a vaginal delivery, cuz that’s not OR territory, but c-sections are the kind of case you’re on high alert for the entire time cuz shit can go south really fast for both mother and baby. The amount of force I’ve seen (and contributed to) applied to get a baby out could definitely be in dismemberment territory if there was some defect at play that could make the bones/muscles weaker than normal... article doesn't say anything about that being the case, but point is that we tend to think of handling babies as being an exceptionally gentle process, and that is 100% not the case when it comes to getting them out of the mother.
Some of the most horrific things I’ve seen in the OR have been in the c-section room. But they’re the kind of thing that if you don’t do, it’s basically a death sentence for the mom or the baby... like, do you leave a baby stuck in the birth canal with its umbilical cord wrapped around its neck; or do you pull a little harder to get it out? You're weighing certain death against possible death, but the latter being an exceptionally shocking worse-case scenario.
Can't emphasize enough: wasn't there, can't justify squat, but I have been in situations where the the surgeon weighed a risk like that, and the only reason you didn't read about that case in the news was that the risk paid off and we got the desired outcome. Luck.
The ruling on this one of homicide as opposed to murder or even involuntary manslaughter is a point of interest. Homicide is the killing of another human, but isn't typically a charge in and of itself... illegal and intentional homicide is murder; legal and justifiable homicide could be something like self defense... but just "homicide" only tells us that the baby was killed, and yeah no shit.
Anyway, based on my own experience, I’d give the doc and delivery team the benefit of the doubt in terms of the operation: extreme circumstances can call for an extreme response, and when that doesn’t work, the result is also extreme. This is a case that will haunt the staff involved all the way to the grave - really hope the hospital hooks them all up with top-notch therapy after that shit. The absence of murder/manslaughter charge leads me to believe their investigation found some merit in the doc's decision to pull extra hard.
Thad said, state law is a weird animal, so "homicide" in Georgia legally speaking could be equatable to "murder" everywhere else. /shrug.
But even assuming the best-case-scenario clinically, the lack of transparency after the fact though is 100% inexcusable, but also unsurprising coming from a private hospital. Their decisions are driven by money and PR. Ethics are a tie breaker at best.
The bit that makes me not want to give the benefit of the doubt is the fact that they had lost fetal heart tones an hour before going to C-section. For a delivery like this with a couple known complications going into it, the threshold to go to the OR should be much lower. Also, as barbaric as it is, something like an episiotomy could have averted this death.
An episiotomy is a cut (incision) made in the tissue between the vaginal opening and the anus during childbirth. This area is called the perineum. Although an episiotomy was once a routine part of childbirth, that's no longer the case.
Wow
C-sections can be done to recover the corpse of a fetus. It's not common - I've only seen it once, it was easily the single most fucked up thing I've witnessed. An hour isn't an unreasonable amount of time to staff and setup a c-section. It's not a STAT, for sure, but with the fetus already dead, the only urgency would be on behalf of the mother, so if her life wasn't in danger at that time, things were likely slowing back down at that point.
"Officials... said that the doctor who delivered the baby, Tracy St. Julian is not “and never has been” an employee of the hospital."
How does that work?
If I know my movies and TV shows, you go into the locker room and steal someone's lab coat and everyone thinks you belong.
I concur. Do you concur?
Or your boss invites your estranged wife to just work there without telling anyone she's coming. Oh and then you hire the guy she slept with. And everyone is fucking everyone all the time. Including patients.
I swear, if Seattle Grace had an HR department they're probably all alcoholics.
Doctors sometimes work as contractors for different hospitals.
In my area, I don't think any doctors are employees of the hospital. The way it was explained to me was that it's not allowed.
Ok, so from the article, the doctor attempted to puke that baby out and decapitated in the process. They had to do a c section to get the body out separately. The doctor then just tells the parents the baby died, not how it died. The parents find out at the nursing home the baby was decapitated.
So they hire a pathologist to do a post mortem analysis on the body and the pathologist POSTS GRAPHIC PHOTOS OF THE BODY ON HIS INSTAGRAM.
the doctor attempted to puke that baby out
Well that's... quite the visual.
The previous article about the story that this one links to says the doctor not only lied, they also tried to cover it up by wrapping the baby up so tightly the parents couldn’t tell its head wasn’t attacked, and saying they couldn’t get the free autopsy they were eligible for and that they should cremate the body. Wtf.
Are you unfamiliar with human anatomy, or just an edgelord?
Edit: copy edgelord
That make you a pizza cutter then, boss? All edge and no point?
Nope I'm out.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news...but it was a complete decapitation. The torso and limbs were delivered via delayed C-section and the head was delivered vaginally. This article has the medical examiner's release including the description of the head being detached.
From the article linked in the OP:
“When they wrapped the baby up tightly, they propped the baby’s head on top of the blanket to make it appear like the head was attached when it wasn’t,” attorney Dr. Roderick Edmond said.
Definitely doesn't sound like an "internal decapitation" to me. What a strange thing to lie about.
I knew I had read somewhere before that the baby was physically decapitated; thank you for the link.
Oh thank goodness. I feel so much better about it now. /s
Yeah but that doesn't get as many clicks
Yah, I'm aware. 🙄
Noah, get the boat.
Jesus Christ.
I didn't even know that was possible. Are they really that delicate that you can decapitate them just by pulling? That's horrifying.
Based on the article the doctor spent hours pulling and contorting the baby's head. So, Im guessing that no it's not something you can do just by pulling i.e. something went very wrong here, hence an investigation and possibly criminal charges in the near future.
What the flying fuck
It's like something out of some sick comedy sketch. Except with actual human suffering.
I wish it was.
I can't think of a more appropriate response.
Keep in mind that decapitation doesn't mean the head was removed from the body.
The article indicates that it was full separation
In this case, it was: “According to the complaint, the baby’s legs and torso were delivered through the C-section incision without the head. The baby’s head was then delivered vaginally.”
From here: https://www.ajc.com/news/medical-examiner-rules-babys-decapitation-at-birth-a-homicide/LYMJVYQUUBCD3L5MHUGIQEO3PU/
Yes, it actually by definition does. An internal decapitation doesn't mean the head was removed, but a decapitation does mean the head was removed from the body. That's how the terminology works.