>PARENTING
>Beware of 'bad science'
>By Mark Vonnegut, Globe Correspondent, 10/24/99
>
>Our government's recent warning that it was unsafe to ever have babies
>or small children sleep in bed with their parents went way too far.
>
>The controversial US Consumer Products Safety Commission report and its
>recommendation should be opposed not on the basis of taste - although
>its use of scare tactics makes it vulnerable - or even because it goes
>against the intuition and practice of so many pediatricians and parents.
>It should be challenged because it's bad science.
>
>Bad science sets out to make a point, looks neither to the left nor to
>the right but only straight ahead for evidence that supports the point
>it sets out to make. When it finds evidence it likes, it gathers it
>tenderly and subjects it to little or no testing.
>
>And that's exactly what the commission did in this, its first attempt to
>quantify the number of fatalities resulting from the practice of parents
>"co-sleeping" with their babies and toddlers. The study, published in
>the October issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine,
>was based on the deaths of 515 children under age 2 from 1990 -1997. All
>515 died in adult beds. The commission concluded that all the deaths
>were caused by that fact.
>
>Such a conclusion amounts to connecting dots that shouldn't necessarily
>be connected. If a young child dies in bed with his or her parents,
>there can be many reasons. Completely normal babies can go home after a
>"well baby" checkup (with or without immunizations) and die of Sudden
>Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS. Those babies could be in a
>safety-certified crib, or in an adult bed. Babies can also have
>overwhelming infections, strokes, or congenital heart disease - all of
>which may or may not be correctly diagnosed on autopsy.
>
>The problem might not be with the children. Maybe it's safe to be in bed
>with a sober parent but not a drunken one. Maybe some of the parents
>involved, as was the case with some of the familial SIDS research,
>murdered their children.
>
>Small numbers also make for bad science. Given how many babies and
>toddlers there are in the United States, 515 is a very small number. And
>the number of those deaths due to a "co-sleeping" parent rolling over on
>a child, rather than the child becoming caught in bedding or rails, is
>even smaller: 121. The amount of reliable, testable information
>available in each case is virtually nonexistent. To really understand
>the cause of something that claims the lives of, roughly, 1 in 100,000
>babies and toddlers, you need to follow at least 1 million control
>cases. Only then can you examine a wide array of variables.
>
>The commission based its findings on death certificates, medical
>examiners' reports, and news accounts, dividing them into two
>categories: the 121 youngsters said to have died because a parent or
>caregiver rolled over on top of them, and the 394 who were strangled or
>suffocated in the bedding or bed railing. The study did not examine
>other causes.
>
>Also unknown is the total number of young children who, either regularly
>or occasionally, share a bed with parents. As long as that remains
>unknown, there is no way to measure the relative risk of the practice -
>a "limitation" the commission's study notes.
>
>What else makes for bad science? Investigators with a vested interest in
>their conclusion. A study that concluded there was no danger lurking in
>the "family bed" wouldn't have been covered by the press, wouldn't have
>made such a stunning video as the one that accompanied the commission's
>report (complete with dolls being strangled by the sheets) and wouldn't
>have advanced anyone's career, nor proved to Congress that the agency
>was worth its weight in taxes.
>
>The truth is, almost all mammals (including humans) sleep with their
>babies. Indeed, most human babies in most cultures sleep with their
>parents, and always have. Sleeping apart from babies is a mostly
>British, Northern European experiment that we would do well to wait on
>until the data is in.
>
>Even in the United States, most parents end up sleeping with their
>babies and young children at least some of the time, and previous
>studies - all reported in medical journals - have found no direct risk.
>
>Indeed, there is some evidence that the commission's own research shows
>little difference in where a child under age 2 sleeps. An earlier study
>by the commission (using different years, but the same data) showed an
>annual death rate of 50 for children sleeping in cribs, most of which
>did not meet federal standards. The "adult bed" death rate works out to
>be 64 per year. Although every young life has inestimable value,
>statistically speaking that is not a big difference.
>
>Yet Ann Brown, chairwoman of the commission, in a statement accompanying
>the report gave this stern warning: "The only safe place for babies [to
>sleep] is in a crib that meets current safety standards and has a firm,
>tight-fitting mattress." No room for discussion, no allowance for
>variations in sleeping arrangements, no acknowledgment of what many
>parents have found works quite well for them.
>
>Parents choose to sleep with their babies and toddlers for intensely
>practical and personal reasons: less crying and more sleep. A crying,
>unhappy baby can shape the behavior of his or her parents better that
>any shock ever shaped the behavior of a lab rat. So if snuggling in bed
>together is what it takes to end that crying, a shared bed is what a
>parent will choose.
>
>If we are going to come down firmly against the results of that shaping,
>if we are going to advise parents to disregard their instincts and
>disregard the manifest will of babies, we should have much better
>science than this to go on.
>
>Not many generations ago, the practice of breast-feeding was just about
>killed off by bad science that "proved" the practice was unsanitary. Now
>science can't say enough nice things about breast-feeding; just this
>week brought news that breast-fed babies are less likely to develop
>leukemia. Maybe in a few generations, we'll see studies that indicate
>that babies who sleep with their parents have fewer ear infections, do
>better in school, and don't engage in pseudo-science when they grow up.
>
>This story ran on page E01 of the Boston Globe on 10/24/99.
>© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
>
>USA TODAY
>
>October 12, 1999, Tuesday, FINAL EDITION
>
>SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 16A
>
>LENGTH: 493 words
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D. email:
[log in to unmask]
Anthropology Department phone: (409) 845-5256
Texas A&M University fax: (409) 845-4070
College Station, TX 77843-4352
http://www.prairienet.org/laleche/dettwyler.html
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