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Linfield alumna fights for child custody in rickets case

http://www.linfield.edu/linfield-review/2012/02/linfield-alumna-fights-for-child-custody-in-rickets-case/

– FEBRUARY 27, 2012

POSTED IN: NEWS

Joss Dossey rests after being bandaged for a femoral fracture Nov. 8. Joss was taken into custody by DHS after accussations of child abuse. Photo courtesy of Daniel and Linda Dossey

Ever since Nov. 10, Linda Dossey, class of ‘09, has been fighting for the right to regain custody of her 3-month-old son, who was taken away from Dossey and her husband with accusations of child abuse.

Joss Dossey has been in the possession of a medical foster care home for six months. Linda and her husband, Daniel, are allowed to visit several times a week, but they are fighting for the custody of their child.

Junior Daphne Dossett, Linda’s younger sister, said that it was hard to watch the incident unravel.

“My sister, as well as my brother-in-law, are great parents,” she said. “They also have a 20-month-old daughter, my adorable niece, who is in perfect health and very smart for her age.

It constantly makes me sad and angry that the court system, as well as the Department of Human Services, are doing this to such a loving family.”

The DHS pulled Joss from his parents’ home two days after he was diagnosed with a femoral fracture on Nov. 8.

Daniel brought his son to the hospital that day because Joss had been fussy and had a low fever.

Linda and Daniel assumed that their son’s discomfort had to do with a stomach ache or gassiness, but they wanted to ensure that there weren’t complications they were unaware of.

A nurse at Willamette Valley Medical Center in McMinnville checked Joss, noting that he didn’t seem to have any swelling or bruising and that all his joints had a normal range of movement.

Daniel said an emergency room doctor also examined Joss and noticed that Joss’ legs were pulled tightly to his abdomen, which is a sign that a baby could be experiencing stomach pain or gassiness.

In a letter posted to his blog on Feb. 5, Daniel wrote that as the doctor manipulated the baby’s legs, the child screamed loudly.

At the time, aside from feeling sympathetic, the Dosseys said they didn’t think the scream was especially concerning.

After further investigation and several x-rays, technicians informed the Dosseys that their son needed to be transferred to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital because he had a femoral fracture on his left leg.

The Dosseys said they were unaware of the fracture, as Joss hadn’t been acting as if the leg was causing him pain.

Doctors and a police officer questioned the family closely, asking if the parents had beaten Joss or if he had been involved in any accidents that could have induced the damage.

Although the Dosseys denied these accusations, the medical staff was required to file a report of the incident, and DHS took Joss away from his family on Nov. 10 with accusations of child abuse.

After more extensive testing, it was revealed that Joss had neonatal rickets, which is a metabolic bone disease that can compromise bone density and strength, which led the Dosseys to believe that their son’s  fracture was the result of this previously-undiagnosed disease.

The family began  the judicial hearing process on Jan. 5.

“The problem with this process is that it is held in the Juvenile Courts and rather than using “beyond a reasonable doubt” they use “preponderance of evidence,” which refers to balancing the evidence,” Daniel said.

Daniel said that it was made clear that the hospital had lost blood tests, including a vitamin D test and phosphorus, ionized calcium and PTH tests, which are all vital for diagnosing rickets.

The Dosseys said they even had a doctor  testify that Moss had neonatal rickets.

“The state provided numerous medical
witnesses, and each of these witnesses except Dr.
Valvano, a child abuse expert who has been a doctor for since 2005, had admitted that if my son had a medical condition of bone fragility, it could explain his fractures,” Daniel said.

He said the unexplained bone fractures were the only diagnosed injuries and that it was even noted in court that there was likely a new rib fracture after Joss was placed in foster care.

Dossett said her family has continued to fight for custody of Joss, which has included seeking help from multiple doctors, radiologists and an attorney.

“We are also going to appeal,” Dossett said. “I am just concerned because I know that appeals can take a long time and I want my nephew back with my family as soon as possible, back to the healthiest and most loving place he can be.”

____________________________________________________________________
Joanna Peterson/Managing editor
Joanna Peterson can be reached at linfieldreviewmanaging@gmail.com.

If You Take Oral Vitamin D You MUST Avoid Making This Serious Mistake

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/23/oral-vitamin-d-mistake.aspx?fb_ref=fbLike&fb_source=home_oneline

Posted By Dr. Mercola | February 23 2012 | 156,363 views

By Dr. Mercola

Did you know there are two types of vitamin D, and they are NOT interchangeable?

In fact, taking the wrong one could do you more harm than good...

Drisdol is a synthetic form of vitamin D2—made by irradiating fungus and plant matter—and is the form of vitamin D typically prescribed by doctors.

This is not the type produced by your body in response to sun or safe tanning bed exposure, which is vitaminD3. 

A recent meta-analysis by the Cochrane Databaseⁱlooked at mortality rates for people who supplemented their diets with D2 versus those who did so with D3, the form naturally produced by your body, highlighting the significant differences between the two. 

The analysis of 50 randomized controlled trials, which included a total of 94,000 participants, showed:

• A six percent relative risk reduction among those who used vitamin D3, but
• A two percent relative risk increase among those who used D2

According to the Vitamin D Councilⁱⁱ:

"You would think a paper that took a look at tens of thousands of subjects and analyzed the efficacy of prescription vitamin D (D2) and over-the-counter vitamin D (D3) would warrant a news story or two.

To my knowledge, these papers are the first to paint such a clear picture about the efficacy between D3 and D2.

While there may be explanations for D3's superiority other than improved efficacy, for the time being, these papers send doctors a message: use D3, not D2."

The Difference Between Supplemental Vitamin D2 and D3

The notion that vitamin D2 and D3 were equivalent was based on decades-old studies of rickets prevention in infants. Today, we know a lot more about vitamin D, and the featured study offers compelling support for the recommendation to take vitamin D3 if you need to take an oral supplement—which is the same type of D vitamin created in your body when you expose your skin to sunlight.

Supplemental vitamin D comes in two forms:

1. Ergocalciferol (vitamin D2)
2. Cholecalciferol (vitamin D3)

I personally recommend getting your vitamin D from safe sun exposure (or a safe tanning bed), as there's compelling reason to believe the vitamin D created in your skin in response to sun exposure has some slight but important differences that make it even more beneficial than supplemental vitamin D3. I will address this more in just a moment, but first, let's review the differences between the two types of supplemental vitamin D. Aside from the featured findings that supplemental vitamin D3 reduced the relative mortality risk by six percent, while D2 actually INCREASED mortality risk by two percent, the two types differ in the following ways:

• According to the latest research, D3 is approximately 87 percent more potentⁱⁱⁱ in raising and maintaining vitamin D concentrations and produces 2- to 3-fold greater storage of vitamin D than does D2.
• Regardless of which form you use, your body must convert it into a more active form, and vitamin D3 is converted 500 percent faster than vitamin D2.
• Vitamin D2 also has a shorter shelf life, and its metabolites bind poorly with proteins, further hampering its effectiveness.

What about Dietary Sources? Animal-Based versus Plant-Based Vitamin D

Aside from taking an oral vitamin D supplement, you can also obtain small amounts of vitamin D from your diet. Here too, it's important to realize that not all food sources provide the same kind of vitamin D. Plant sources provide you with D2. The more beneficial D3 can only be had through animal-based sources such as:

• Fish, such as salmon, mackerel, tuna and sardines
• Egg yolk
• Raw milk

Dairy processors producing pasteurized milk have also been fortifying milk with vitamin D since 1933. Today, about 98 percent of the milk supply in the U.S. is fortified with approximately 400 International Units (IU) of vitamin D per quart. While dairies used to fortify their milk with vitamin D2, most have now switched over to D3. But, if you still drink pasteurized milk (which I don't recommend), check the label to see which form of vitamin D has been added. (If you drink raw milk, then you're getting the naturally-occurring vitamin D in the milk fat.) Keep in mind that although milk is fortified, other dairy products such as cheese and ice cream does typically not contain added vitamin D.

Vitamin D Can Make or Break Your Health, So Get the Right Kind!

There's overwhelming evidence that vitamin D is a key player in your overall health. This is understandable when you consider that it is not "just" a vitamin; it's actually a neuroregulatory steroidal hormone that influences nearly 3,000 different genes in your body. Receptors that respond to the vitamin have been found in almost every type of human cell, from your brain to your bones.

Just one example of an important gene that vitamin D up-regulates is your ability to fight infections, as well as chronic inflammation. It produces over 200 antimicrobial peptides, the most important of which is cathelicidin, a naturally occurring broad-spectrum antibiotic. This is one of the explanations for why it can be so effective against colds and influenza.

Optimizing your vitamin D levels should be at the top of the list for virtually everyone, regardless of your age, sex, color, or health status, as vitamin D deficiency has been linked to an astonishingly diverse array of common chronic diseases, such as:

Cancer	Hypertension	Heart disease
Autism	Obesity	Rheumatoid arthritis
Diabetes 1 and 2	Multiple Sclerosis	Crohn's disease
Cold & Flu	Inflammatory Bowel Disease	Tuberculosis
Septicemia	Signs of aging	Dementia
Eczema & Psoriasis	Insomnia	Hearing loss
Muscle pain	Cavities	Periodontal disease
Osteoporosis	Macular degeneration	Reduced C-section risk
Pre eclampsia	Seizures	Infertility
Asthma	Cystic fibrosis	Migraines
Depression	Alzheimer's disease	Schizophrenia

The IDEAL Way to Optimize Your Vitamin D Levels

While this article is focused on the two types of oral vitamin D supplementation, it's important to realize that the IDEAL way to optimize your vitamin D levels is through appropriate sun or safe tanning bed exposure. While your skin does create vitamin D3 in response to sun light, which is theoretically the same as the D3 you get from an oral supplement, there's cause to believe that the vitamin D created from sun exposure may have additional health benefits, and here's why:

• When you expose your skin to the sun, your skin also synthesizes high amounts of cholesterol sulfate, which is very important for heart and cardiovascular health. In fact, according to research by Dr. Stephanie Seneff, high LDL and subsequent heart disease may in fact be a symptom of cholesterol sulfate deficiency. Sulfur deficiency also promotes obesity and related health problems like diabetes
• When exposed to sunshine, your skin also synthesizes vitamin D3 sulfate. This form of vitamin D is water soluble, unlike oral vitamin D3 supplements, which is unsulfated. The water-soluble form can travel freely in your bloodstream, whereas the unsulfated form needs LDL (the so-called "bad" cholesterol) as a vehicle of transport. According to Dr. Stephanie Seneff, there's reason to believe that many of the profound benefits of vitamin D are actually due to the vitamin D sulfate. As a result, she suspects that the oral non-sulfated form of vitamin D might not provide all of the same benefits, because it cannot be converted to vitamin D sulfate
• You cannot overdose when getting your vitamin D from sun exposure, as your body has the ability to self-regulate and only make what it needs

So essentially, getting regular sun exposure has much greater health ramifications than "just" raising your vitamin D levels and preventing infections. Sun exposure also appears to play a role in heart and cardiovascular health, and much more!

If you cannot get your vitamin D requirements from sun exposure, I recommend using a safe tanning bed (one with electronic ballasts rather than magnetic ballasts, to avoid unnecessary exposure to EMF fields). Safe tanning beds also have less of the dangerous UVA than sunlight, while unsafe ones have more UVA than sunlight. If neither of these are feasible options, then you should take an oral vitamin D3 supplement. It will certainly be better than no vitamin D at all.

How Much Vitamin D Should You Take?

Some 40 leading vitamin D experts from around the world currently agree that there's no specific dosage level at which "magic" happens; rather the most important factor when it comes to vitamin D is your serum level (the level of vitamin D in your blood). So you really should be taking whatever dosage required to obtain a therapeutic level of vitamin D in your blood.

That said, based on the most recent research by GrassrootsHealth—an organization that has greatly contributed to the current knowledge on vitamin D through their D* Action Study—it appears as though most adults need about 8,000 IU's of vitamin D a day in order to raise their serum levels above 40 ng/ml.⁴ For children, many experts agree they need about 35 IU's of vitamin D per pound of body weight.

At the time GrassrootsHealth performed the studies that resulted in this dosage recommendation, the optimal serum level was believed to be between 40 to 60 ng/ml. Since then, the optimal vitamin D level has been raised to 50-70 ng/ml, and when treating cancer or heart disease, as high as 70-100 ng/ml, as illustrated in the chart above.

What this means is that even if you do not regularly monitor your vitamin D levels (which you should), your risk of overdosing is going to be fairly slim even if you take as much as 8,000 IU's a day. However, the only way to determine your optimal dose is to get your blood tested regularly, and adjust your dosage to maintain that goldilocks' zone.

For more information, including an in-depth explanation of everything you need to know before you get tested, please see Test Values and Treatment for Vitamin D Deficiency.

References:

---

• ⁱ Vitamin D Supplementation for Prevention of Mortality in Adults, The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, July 6, 2011: (7); CD007470, G. Bjelakovic, et al.
• ⁱⁱ Meta-analysis Looks at Efficacy of D2 vs D3, Vitamin D Council, November 16, 2011: Dr. John Cannell.
• ⁱⁱⁱ Vitamin D3 Is More Potent Than Vitamin D2 in Humans, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, March 1, 2011: 96 (3);  E447-E452, Robert P. Heaney, et al.

Editorials: Rickets: Emerging from Obscurity - August 15, 2006 - American Family Physician

Editorials: Rickets: Emerging from Obscurity - August 15, 2006 - American Family Physician

"During the past two decades, the lifestyles and dietary habits of Americans have changed considerably. The average American spends 93 percent of his or her time indoors5—more time spent in front of the television, the video game console, or the computer. Children with lighter pigment who are encouraged to play outdoors often are covered with sunscreen during the summer months, preventing the synthesis of previtamin D3 in their skin 6 and making them more susceptible to vitamin D deficiency during winter months, especially in northern climates. Children with darker pigment require much greater sunlight exposure to attain the same levels of vitamin D3.7"

Rickets: What It Is and How It's Treated - August 15, 2006 - American Family Physician

Rickets: What It Is and How It's Treated - August 15, 2006 - American Family Physician

"What are the symptoms of rickets?

Young babies with rickets can be fussy and have soft skulls. Infants and toddlers may not develop, walk, or grow well. Older children may have bone pain and bowed legs, or their wrists and knees may get wider. The picture on the next page shows some symptoms of rickets."

Ped. says bf babies need vitamin D supplement???

Here is a forum from 1999 discussing how important it is to supplement vitamin D to babies who are only breast fed. It also states that 1/240 children who are solely breast fed, without supplementation will have Rickets by 3 months.

"7 cases of rickets in an 18 month period in a city as small as 

Minneapolis seems shockingly high to me. [2] And we don't know how many
babies had lesser cases of bone deficiencies that weren't severe enough
to be noticed. How many babies we you think there even ARE in a city
that size who breastfeed without formula supplements for any length of
time? 

A back of the envelope calculation, starting from the Minneapolis
homepage, gives a population of about 1 million for the city and
surrounding county.  Assuming that 2% of the population is under the age
of 1, and that only 10% of babies are breastfed for more than 3 months
without formula supplements, we come up with an estimate of just 2000
breastfed babies.  If I take the San Diego study to estimate that 80% of
doctors recommend supplements to these babies, but assume that half the
parents ignore the advice, that brings me down to an estimate of just
1200 babies who are breastfed, and aren't getting either formula or
vitamin supplements.  Normalizing 7 babies in 18 months to a 12 month
period, we get about 5. 

So a very crude estimate comes up with 5/1200 or 1 in 240.  What do you
know, that's pretty close to the risk of Hemorrhagic Disease of the
Newborn that most babies get a vitamin K shot to prevent!  You can play
around with the number by changing some of my estimates, but my point is
that the risk of rickets may not be as low as you think, given the
fairly small number of babies that are breastfed for a significant
amount of time."

Parents Beware!!!

This is an old forum from the late 90s. They are talking about some of the very same issues we see today. Doctors are over reacting and causing traumatic separations within families. To see more, see: http://groups.google.com/group/ne.general.selected/browse_thread/thread/702afc7c4c4e1ef3/ed85425ce42992fe?q=pediatrician+child+abuse&pli=1