Hi, Lactfolks, Lisa Mo here.
James McKenna would like your attention concerning an NPR interview to be
broadcast tomorrow (Wednesday). Contact with your local media would also be
appreciated, especially if you have an opportunity to present a rebuttal in
the reports that will be printed/announced tomorrow.
Ann Brown, Commission of Product Safety (United States), will be making the
announcement that all babies should sleep in cribs, not the parental bed,
based on the Drago and Dannenberg study that was published in Pediatrics
electronic pages in May 1999, which was discussed on Lactnet this summer.
<A HREF="http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/103/5/e59">Pediatrics --
Drago and Dannenberg 103 (5): e59</A>
<A HREF="http://www.aap.org/advocacy/releases/mayinf.htm">AAP News Release -
Infants at Increasing Risk of Suffocation Death</A>
The letter Dr. McKenna and Dr. Gartner have sent to Pediatrics about the
study is in press, but the material might be used for background information,
(probably not quotations). For a copy of this letter, please email me. Dr.
McKenna says to use whatever information you find helpful.
Below is information from Dr. McKenna:
Here is some ammunition that folks can use to call their media to
complain--and to get counter position across.
Press release--put out on Monday:
Statement on sleeping locations and sudden death in infants
From the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center
Abraham B. Bergman, MD, Director of Pediatrics, Harborview Medical
Center and Professor of Pediatrics, University of Washington
Richard Harruff, MD, PhD, Medical Examiner of King County, Clinical
Associate Professor of Pathology, University of Washington.
MaryAnn O'Hara, MD
Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, University of Washington
Our points:
While we applaud the CPSC for calling attention to environmental hazards to
infants such as wedge spaces around mattresses/cushions, and the risks of
strangulation from cords or widely spaced crib rails we condemn their
campaign to implicate bed sharing, and use of an adult bed as a hazard for
infants. The original data that form the bases for these recommendations are
seriously flawed.; a classic case of "garbage in, and garbage."
The major flaws are:
1. Data: Though we know the number of infants said to have died in adult
beds, we do not
know the number of infants sleeping in adult beds who did
<underline>not</underline>
die. In other words, before making statements of relative risk, it is
necessary to know
both the numerator (deaths), <underline>and</underline> the denominator
(infants who
do not die.)
2. Certification of death: The CPSC depends entirely on what someone wrote
as a cause
on the death certificate. Death investigation and certification practices
vary widely in the
United States. Those who certify deaths range from coroners with no medical
training to
forensic pathologists.
3. Bias: In a review of CPSC data since 1995 one of us (MAO) found that the
term "overlaying" was used in some geographic area, and not in others. The
death of an infant
with the same pathologic findings might be classified as overlaying or
suffocation if the
family is poor and/or minority, and SIDS or interstitial pneumonia if the
family is white
and/or middle class.
4. Who should make pronouncements on child-care practices: It is not
appropriate for a
government agency with scant medical expertise to provide advice on
child-care practices on the basis of one study. A prestigious organization
like the American Academy of Pediatrics should first review the evidence and
make appropriate recommendations.
Abraham B. Bergman , MD
206 731 5424
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
9/24/99
Here are some quotes of mine that you can use-if you find them useful.
Their analysis and recommendation simply assumes without any credible
scientific
evidence whatsoever that even a nonsmoking, breast feeding mother who
bedshares to
protect and nurture her infant is no more than passive lethal weapon--wooden
rolling
pin, if you will, over which neither she nor her infant has any control. Such
thinking is
both morally and scientifically bankrupt....The researchers equate mothers
with bed
hazards--no different than head or foot board that don't meet the mattress.
Fortunately, we
have peer reviewed, multiple scientific studies of bedsharing that prove them
wrong!
That dangerous conditions can exist in the bedsharing environment is no more
an
argument against all bedsharing--and that it cannot be done safely--than is
the fact that
babies strangle and die alone in cribs an argument against all solitary
infant sleep.
The researchers feel obviously, that problems (hazards) associated with
solitary crib
sleeping are problems worth solving but when it comes to mother-infant
bedsharing, they
simply assume that any problem associated with it cannot be solved, but is
invariable and
inevitable. The only problem is, that this view iscompletely
incorrect..hundreds of
thousands and millions of people worldwide bedshare-- and more importantly,
whether or
not the "problems or hazards" associated with bedsharing are worth
solving--should
remain the parents choice--not the choice of the consumer product safety
commission!
To accept the logic of the researchers one could say that because some
parents fail to
strap their babies into secure car seats, and may drive drunk, and have
accidents which
injures or kills babies, all car transportation of infants should be advised
against or
"banned".
However tragic each of the infant deaths are, 121 babies allegedly overlayed
under
unknown circumstances is hardly the basis for a rigid, universal
one-size-must fit all
recommendation, especially for something as important and as complicated as
mothers
and infants sleeping side by side--which represents the universal,
biologically appropriate
sleeping arrangements for infants world wide.
The biological sudies of cosleeping and mother-infant bedsharing suggest that
we should
be assuming and looking for all the hidden benefits that can come and follow
to babies
and mothers by bedsharing--not hidden or explicit dangers.
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