Tell us the truth

For years passive smoking has been cited, in some quarters, as a significant factor in sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Now, following a nine-month investigation in the USA, the Scripps Howard News Service reports that most of the victims of SIDS die "because they are accidentally smothered by their parents or other children who sleep with them or because they are placed on dangerous overstuffed sofas or heavily blanketed adult beds".

The Scripps study also found that most coroners are not following the methods of investigation recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prompting them instead to rely on often-incorrect diagnoses of SIDS, still the officially listed cause for 57 percent of all infant deaths.

But the top 11 coroners in the Scripps study said they are confident that the SIDS diagnosis is grossly overused in America because their own investigations overwhelmingly lead to different conclusions ... [They] agree it's difficult to tell grieving families the truth.

"As a coroner, you don't want to look into the face of a grandmother or father or mother who rolled over and smothered their child. There's no way to console them," said Dr John McGoff. "But without that knowledge, there's no prevention."

"A huge percentage of sudden infant deaths will be found to be asphyxia if a proper death scene investigation is done," said Theresa Covington, director of the Michigan-based National Center for Child Death Review Policy. "This is what the national evidence is leading us to. They are not homicides or anything else. They are accidental suffocations."

"If we can get to the truth, then we can craft the right intervention strategies so that we can actually make a dent in the number of sudden and unexplained infant deaths. We are doing a disservice to the parents if we don't tell them the truth," Covington said.

Full story HERE.

Comments

[Blad Tolstoy]

This was a really interesting article, Simon. One of the most interesting you have cited yet.