Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences Carola Garcia de Vinuesa (born 1969)[1] is a Spanish doctor, scientist, and professor.
She is Royal Society Wolfson Fellow and Senior Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London, and at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra.
[2] While she was a student, she worked in a leprosy clinic in Kolkata on the shores of the Ganges, and helped train health workers in Ghana in rural areas.
She said that Ghanan children were overwhelmingly admitted for unpreventable meningitis, leading her to believe that her time would be better spent learning the cause of the deadly disease, to develop preventative measures.
Vinuesa noted obvious signs of common causes for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), including floppy larynx and inflammation of the heart, that should have given reasonable doubt in the face of a lack of evidence of violence.
Vinuesa agreed to consult on the case in an email to Folbigg's attorneys writing, "As a mother, I cannot think of a more worthy cause," and that she found it hard to believe someone could be imprisoned over it.
[3] In November 2018, Vinuesa and a colleague, geneticist Dr. Todor Arsov, sequenced Folbigg's DNA and analyzed it for genetic mutations that could be linked to diseases that could cause SIDS or Sudden Unexpected Death in Childhood (SUDC).
[3] The evidence presented in the reassessment of the New South Wales case was discounted as "speculation" by a team of scientists from Sydney commissioned by the Attorney General of Australia (AG).
[3][14] In 2020, Vinuesa, Arsov, Schwartz, and 24 other scientists co-authored a paper called, Infanticide vs. inherited cardiac arrhythmias, which was published that November by EP Europace.
[15] Folbigg's legal team used the paper as evidence in an appeal to the Supreme Court of New South Wales, but the judges upheld Blanch's decision.
She said that scientists should be chosen who base their reasoning on "peer-reviewed scientific evidence," with specific expertise on the fields in question, and needed to be "treated as equals" to and by their legal peers during the process.
[16] On June 5, 2023, as a result of the interventions of the scientific community, Kathleen Folbigg was granted an unconditional pardon and set free, pending the quashing of the 2003 verdict.