Baby Docs: Possible Murder in SIDS Cases

C H I C A G O, Feb. 5 -- The nation’s largest group of pediatricians isrecommending for the first time that all suspected cases of suddeninfant death syndrome be investigated by a child abuse expertbecause of growing fears that some such deaths are murders.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the government alreadyrecommend death-scene investigations and autopsies for all SIDScases.

But it is virtually impossible “to distinguish at autopsybetween SIDS and accidental or deliberate asphyxiation with a softobject,” said Dr. Kent Hymel, a member of the academy’schild-abuse committee, which wrote the updated guidelines.

The new guidelines say that unless the autopsy examiner is achild abuse expert, a pre-autopsy exam should be performed by aspecialist.

More Investigations Might Reveal Murder

While cases of parents killing their babies are rare, morethorough investigations would probably reveal that some suspectedSIDS cases are murders, Hymel said.

The updated guidelines were published in the February issue ofthe journal Pediatrics. They mostly reaffirm the guidelines issuedby the 55,000-member academy in 1999.

The changes stem from a few highly publicized cases and a 1997report from British researchers who documented an alarming numberof parents trying to suffocate their babies.

Parents were caught on videotape trying to suffocate 30 out of39 children hospitalized after unexplained or suspicious accidentsat home. The researchers also learned that 11 of the children’ssiblings had supposedly died of SIDS; parents later admitted tosuffocation in eight cases.

“Physicians don’t want to consider these kinds of acts,” Hymelsaid.

The revision was also prompted by the 1997 book The Death ofInnocents, about a New York state woman whose five childrensupposedly died of SIDS. She ultimately was convicted of smotheringthem all.

More recently, a Philadelphia mother pleaded guilty in 1999 tosmothering eight children whose deaths initially were classified asSIDS.