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A new look at the records of 40,000 infant deaths casts deep doubt on claims of medical authorities that cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome have fallen by more than half since the 1990s. A Scripps Howard News Service Investigation of infant deaths going back to 1992 revealed that the quality of infant death investigations, the level of training for coroners, and the amount of oversight and review vary enormously across the country. In many cases, professional bias -- both for and against a diagnosis of SIDS -- trumps medical evidence. The sloppy investigations and muddled records come with a very high price: the deaths of more babies who might have been saved through medical research.

Special Report || Saving Babies: Exposing Sudden Infant Death in America

Submitted by SHNS on September 24, 2007 - 1:48pm.
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Infant Death Database
Tens of thousands of federal case records were analyzed for this report. You can search the database for individual cases or compare states and counties.
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Conference questions adult sleep with babies

Submitted by Thomas Hargrove on April 16, 2008 - 10:13am.

By THOMAS HARGROVE and LEE BOWMAN
Scripps Howard News Service

PITTSBURGH -- America grossly undercounts the number of babies who suffocate in avoidable sleeping accidents, top medical authorities and child safety advocates agreed in a first-of-its-kind gathering to combat sudden infant death.

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A summit to improve investigation of sudden infant death

Submitted by Thomas Hargrove on April 16, 2008 - 9:37am.

By THOMAS HARGROVE and LEE BOWMAN
Scripps Howard News Service

PITTSBURGH -- Child-safety advocates assembled here Friday to consider reform measures, including new federal legislation, to improve the investigation and prevention of sudden infant death.

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Experts, lawmakers call for standardized infant death investigations

Submitted by Thomas Hargrove on January 4, 2008 - 4:10pm.

By THOMAS HARGROVE and LEE BOWMAN

Scripps Howard News Service

WASHINGTON _ Influential members of Congress and child safety advocates are working to change how America investigates and diagnoses more than 4,000 sudden infant deaths each year.

Policy makers have become dissatisfied that five of every six unexpected infant fatalities in the United States are classified as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or labeled simply as "death by cause or causes unknown."

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Sharing bed with baby can be dangerous, controversial

Submitted by SHNS on December 14, 2007 - 12:45pm.

By LEE BOWMAN
Scripps Howard News Service

Simon Hunsberger was lying on his back in bed between his dad, Jeffrey Hunsberger, and his mom, Michelle Legere, when they found him lifeless in their Vermont home one Sunday morning in August 2005.

"We just woke up and he was on his back, one arm up by his ear, and he was just cold; he'd been dead for a while," Hunsberger said.

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Crib programs aim to keep infants safe

Submitted by SHNS on December 14, 2007 - 12:43pm.

By LEE BOWMAN
Scripps Howard News Service

It's the ABCs of infant safe sleep -- Alone, on the Back, in a Crib.

But as counselors and researchers reviewing sudden infant deaths around the country have found, there are often financial, social and educational barriers to many families having a proper crib where their baby can sleep.

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Thousands of babies die of preventable suffocation each year

Submitted by SHNS on December 14, 2007 - 12:18pm.

By THOMAS HARGROVE and LEE BOWMAN Scripps Howard News Service The mystery of sudden infant death has been solved in a growing number of communities in America. But the answer is seldom SIDS. Coroners who carefully follow federal guidelines while probing the 4,000 unexpected infant deaths nationally each year are discovering a hard truth. Most of these babies are suffocating in completely avoidable accidents, a nine-month investigation by Scripps Howard News Service has found.

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Update: Standardized investigations lacking in infant deaths

Submitted by SHNS on November 7, 2007 - 2:31pm.

Child-safety advocates are stepping up calls for national standards on investigating sudden infant deaths after new revelations about the tattered patchwork of state systems determining what kills more than 4,000 babies a year.

Although federal and international authorities have had guidelines for making a diagnosis of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome for many years, experts around the country say they are often skipped or only cursorily done.

Such experts have turned up the volume for national standards after a Scripps Howard News Service study of 40,000 sudden, unexplained infant deaths since 1992 showed that geography, rather than medical evidence, often determines whether babies are found to have died from SIDS, suffocation or "undetermined" causes.

Deborah Robinson
^ Deborah Robinson of Kirkland, Wash., an infant-death specialist with the SIDS Foundation of Washington, in a lab at the University of Washington, one of the nation's top centers for research on the causes of sudden unexplained infant death.
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