>In a message dated 10/1/1999 7:43:54 AM Central Daylight Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
><< From today's Op-Ed section of the New York Times on the Web:
>
> October 1, 1999
>
> Beware the Parenting Police
>
> By PENELOPE LEACH


Much as I admire  Penelope Leach's work, she is making a very poor mess of
her stats here, I think.

SIDS has nothing to do with the 'no babies in adult beds'  pronouncement.
The babies in the Product Safety statistics did not die of SIDS - or at
least they may have done, but  the recorded causes of death were not SIDS.

They died, according to the Commission,  because they were in adult beds,
either as a fault of the furniture (entrapment in rails etc) or because
they were unable to breath as a result of adult suffocation (again,
according to the recorded causes of death).

"Three other studies, in the United States, New Zealand and Britain,
 reported no direct risk to babies from sleeping in parents' beds. The
 studies, published in medical journals in 1996, 1997 and 1999, blamed other
 factors for deaths. The New Zealand research found that sudden infant death
 syndrome could be reduced by 35 percent if babies slept on their backs
 instead of their stomachs. This is now accepted advice everywhere."

But these studies were soley about SIDS. Not about non-SIDS deaths...'no
direct risk to babies from sleeping in parents' beds' only referred to
SIDS. There *may* be a risk to babies who sleep in adult beds - for
example, without an adult, on a water bed, on a mattress which slips and
allows entrapment in the bed rails, with an adult who is too drunk or
drugged to know if they have rolled over their baby. Allowing any of these
situations to happen is (arguably) negligent, and the baby has died because
of lack of proper care, not because of co-sleeping.

It's this that makes the  'bed sharing ban' so short-sighted, not the SIDS
figures.

If we criticise the Commission for its poor use of stats, it's a shame if
the 'good guys' are making the same errors : (

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK

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