6 ms·

Do you have any source for this? I didn't see anything to that effect on Wikipedia (which cites articles from NEJM and other reputable journals when discussing

by clucas 4y ago

Do you have any source for this? I didn't see anything to that effect on Wikipedia (which cites articles from NEJM and other reputable journals when discussing the phenomenon) or the Mayo Clinic's page. You (and others in this thread) are talking about this debunking as if it's common knowledge, but I'm not seeing it. Am I looking in the wrong places?

colechristensen 4y ago
Here's one https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/activities/SIDS/progress https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/activities/SIDS/progress The SIDS rate dropped from ~1.4 to ~0.5 per thousand with a pretty strong correlation to back-sleeping and a campaign to promote it, combined with shifting cause of death diagnoses to "accidental suffocation". If you can reduce the prevalence of a diagnosis by 65% by having babies sleep on their back, there's a good chance the cause of death in a good few of the remaining cases (and ones not prevented in the path) ought to be something like "suffocated while not sleeping on their back" instead of a mysterious illness. Even the linked paper quotes >The “triple risk model” hypothesises that SIDS deaths result from coincident occurrence of a vulnerable infant, a critical developmental period, and an exogenous stressor which if this is the model for SIDS should get real philosophical questioning as to the appropriateness of bundling this together into a syndrome instead of labeling the actual cause and trying to fix it specifically (as in, promoting back sleeping as it is a risk for infant suffocation) I don't want to vet individual claims of physicians to quote them, but there are many out there questioning the merits of SIDS as a diagnosis. There is, however, not a boss in charge of science who is going to stamp SIDS as "doesn't exist", and the diagnosis will likely stick around for a long time because of the social issues attached with the trauma and attempts to find non-blaming answers for why a child died.
- sonotathrowaway 4y ago
  Trying to write off the rest of the deaths as improper sleeping doesn’t really make sense to me - that’s like saying that since the majority of strep cases can be treated with broad spectrum antibiotics, therefore MERS doesn’t exist.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    There are indeed always going to be unknown causes of death at any age, sometimes it is just hard to determine. It seems inappropriate to give a name and diagnosis to “cause unknown” MERS and strep both have easily attributed causes. SIDS seems really not to, it really seems that there is not an underlying cause that doesn’t already exist. “Babies are more susceptible to suffocation and more care needs to be taken in their sleeping arrangement” doesn’t seem like a disease, even if some babies are more susceptible than others (and those many individual susceptibilities already have names) Baby humans are vulnerable to lots of things because that’s what they are, SIDS and modern attempts to attribute it to things seems to be a harmful distraction from the actual causes of death.
- clucas 4y ago
  Interesting. Would you consider type 2 diabetes to be a disease? There are clear, well known steps people can take to reduce the likelihood of it happening, after all... I would be more sympathetic to your position if it were likely for death to occur if an infant sleeps in their belly, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It sure seems like SIDS is pretty rare even when belly sleeping, it just increases the risk factor. But, I've only started reading about it in the past two hours, so who knows. Thanks for the reply, in any case.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    > I would be more sympathetic to your position if it were likely for death to occur if an infant sleeps in their belly Given the statistics of back sleeping campaign success it seems fair to say that having your baby sleep on its belly instead of its back would kill 1 in 1000 babies. That doesn’t seem particularly rare. Riding in a car without a car seat is considerably safer, getting covid is considerably safer. It would make up about 20 percent of child mortality deaths in the US, that’s not insignificant.

by clucas 4y ago

colechristensen 4y ago

Here's one https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/activities/SIDS/progress https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/activities/SIDS/progress The SIDS rate dropped from ~1.4 to ~0.5 per thousand with a pretty strong correlation to back-sleeping and a campaign to promote it, combined with shifting cause of death diagnoses to "accidental suffocation". If you can reduce the prevalence of a diagnosis by 65% by having babies sleep on their back, there's a good chance the cause of death in a good few of the remaining cases (and ones not prevented in the path) ought to be something like "suffocated while not sleeping on their back" instead of a mysterious illness. Even the linked paper quotes >The “triple risk model” hypothesises that SIDS deaths result from coincident occurrence of a vulnerable infant, a critical developmental period, and an exogenous stressor which if this is the model for SIDS should get real philosophical questioning as to the appropriateness of bundling this together into a syndrome instead of labeling the actual cause and trying to fix it specifically (as in, promoting back sleeping as it is a risk for infant suffocation) I don't want to vet individual claims of physicians to quote them, but there are many out there questioning the merits of SIDS as a diagnosis. There is, however, not a boss in charge of science who is going to stamp SIDS as "doesn't exist", and the diagnosis will likely stick around for a long time because of the social issues attached with the trauma and attempts to find non-blaming answers for why a child died.

sonotathrowaway 4y ago
Trying to write off the rest of the deaths as improper sleeping doesn’t really make sense to me - that’s like saying that since the majority of strep cases can be treated with broad spectrum antibiotics, therefore MERS doesn’t exist.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  There are indeed always going to be unknown causes of death at any age, sometimes it is just hard to determine. It seems inappropriate to give a name and diagnosis to “cause unknown” MERS and strep both have easily attributed causes. SIDS seems really not to, it really seems that there is not an underlying cause that doesn’t already exist. “Babies are more susceptible to suffocation and more care needs to be taken in their sleeping arrangement” doesn’t seem like a disease, even if some babies are more susceptible than others (and those many individual susceptibilities already have names) Baby humans are vulnerable to lots of things because that’s what they are, SIDS and modern attempts to attribute it to things seems to be a harmful distraction from the actual causes of death.
clucas 4y ago
Interesting. Would you consider type 2 diabetes to be a disease? There are clear, well known steps people can take to reduce the likelihood of it happening, after all... I would be more sympathetic to your position if it were likely for death to occur if an infant sleeps in their belly, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It sure seems like SIDS is pretty rare even when belly sleeping, it just increases the risk factor. But, I've only started reading about it in the past two hours, so who knows. Thanks for the reply, in any case.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  > I would be more sympathetic to your position if it were likely for death to occur if an infant sleeps in their belly Given the statistics of back sleeping campaign success it seems fair to say that having your baby sleep on its belly instead of its back would kill 1 in 1000 babies. That doesn’t seem particularly rare. Riding in a car without a car seat is considerably safer, getting covid is considerably safer. It would make up about 20 percent of child mortality deaths in the US, that’s not insignificant.