METH IN BABY 4 TIMES TOXIC LEVEL

A 31-year-old Kane'ohe woman who turned herself in to authorities yesterday
on charges that she poisoned her baby by using methamphetamine may have
delivered the fatal dose before his birth, according to the medical examiner
who performed the autopsy.

"The bottom line," said Dr. William Goodhue, the first deputy medical
examiner, "is the toxic level of methamphetamine could have come from
interuterine exposure, but it cannot be excluded that some was introduced
after birth."

Treyson Aiwohi was 2 days old when he died on July 17, 2001. During an
autopsy, Goodhue found levels of methamphetamine in the baby that were four
times the level considered toxic in an adult.

Tayshea Aiwohi, Treyson's mother, was released yesterday on $50,000 bail,
the money scraped together by members of her family, said Mark Worsham, the
lawyer who represented Aiwohi in Family Court.

He said she was proud, fighting, but frightened as she kept an appointment
to turn herself in.

"She is doing well, under the circumstances," Worsham said. "She has a good
support system.

"But, yes, she is very scared."

The Aiwohi case is the first in Hawai'i, and one of few in the nation, in
which a mother faced criminal charges for allegedly poisoning her baby by
using methamphetamine while she was pregnant.

Worsham said Aiwohi is a recovering drug addict who has not had a "dirty"
urine analysis since her son's birth, who is now employed as a drug
counselor herself and who has worked hard to be a good mother to the child
she delivered after Treyson's death, as well as to the four children she had
before Treyson was born.

On the day of his birth at Kaiser Medical Center, Treyson tested positive
for methamphetamine, according to authorities, and Child Protective Services
intake workers were notified, as required by state law. The following
evening, on July 16, the baby and his mother were discharged.

Sometime during the early morning hours of July 17, the baby died.

Goodhue said the mother told an investigator for the medical examiner's
office that she had breast-fed the child shortly after arriving home on July
16 and again at 1:30 a.m. on July 17. He was dead by 6 a.m., Goodhue said.

Goodhue said it was possible that at least part of the methamphetamine was
delivered to the baby after his birth - in the breast milk.

But other medical authorities have said that breast milk does not flow
freely enough within two days after birth to deliver a toxic dose of the
drug. Methamphetamine delivered to the fetus through the mother's body
before birth, however, can remain in the child's body for 72 hours, they
said.

"The levels in his blood at autopsy could have come from pre-birth
exposure," Goodhue said yesterday. "However, some might have come from
postnatal, or after birth, exposure."

Either way, he said, "it was virtually impossible for Treyson, a newborn
infant, to have ingested the methamphetamine himself."

Goodhue said he carefully examined Treyson for evidence of disease, trauma
or anything else that might have contributed to his death, other than the
toxic does of methamphetamine. He found nothing.

"We have a clear cause of death from toxic effects of methamphetamine," he
said, repeating the conclusion he recorded in the autopsy report.

The toxic level of methamphetamine for an adult is 0.10 micrograms per
milliliter of blood. Treyson's was 0.40, Goodhue said.

City Deputy Prosecutor Glenn Kim, who is handling the case against Aiwohi,
said yesterday there is no evidence that Aiwohi smoked crystal
methamphetamine after the baby was born.

But there is reason to believe that Aiwohi had taken crystal meth earlier in
the day on which her son was born, Kim said.

Prosecutors are not saying whether their case will rely exclusively on the
mother's prenatal exposure of the child to the drug, or will include the
possibility of exposure through breast feeding.

Worsham, Aiwohi's lawyer, said there was some evidence in the case that
medical officials in the hospital had allowed Aiwohi to breast-feed Treyson.

Jan Kagehiro, a Kaiser spokeswoman, said that although she was unable to
comment on Aiwohi's or any other patient's specific circumstances, doctors
and nurses at Kaiser tell mothers who use drugs not to breast-feed.

The charges against Aiwohi were filed just days after the U.S. Supreme Court
refused to examine a South Carolina case in which a woman was convicting of
poisoning her baby by using cocaine during pregnancy. That baby was
stillborn; the conviction was based on South Carolina law, which
specifically extends homicide prosecution to cases involving a fetus.
Hawai'i laws relate to "a human being who has been born and is alive,''
according to the Hawai'i Penal Code.

The South Carolina conviction was opposed by advocates of drug treatment and
by women's rights groups.

Barry Lester, a drug researcher at Brown University who oversees a national
study of methamphetamine, part of which is being conducted in Hawai'i, said
he was concerned about the effects the two cases would have on meth-addicted
moms and meth-exposed babies across the country.

"This is incredible," he said. "It is escalating. Now people are never going
to come forward and get treatment."

The Supreme Court's decision not to review the South Carolina case did not
play a part in the decision to prosecute Aiwohi, Kim said.

He said he was not aware of the Supreme Court ruling in the South Carolina
case until after Aiwohi was indicted on Thursday.