General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Me vs CP and DU (the long story, for those who don't know it) [View all]pnwmom
(109,025 posts)changed their recommendation and advised parents to put their babies to sleep on their backs instead of their stomachs -- a change which has cut the SIDS rate in half. And even then, some criticized the AAP for making a precipitous decision.
When large profits aren't involved, the medical establishment tends to move extremely slowly. Meanwhile, children die.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/91/2/510.3?variant=abstract&sso=1&sso_redirect_count=1&nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR%3a+No+local+token
To the Editor.
Hunt and Shannon1 decried the "precipitous action" of the task force of the American Academy of Pediatrics when the Academy recommended that "healthy infants, when being put down for sleep, be positioned on their side or back."2 Precipitous seems an inappropriate description of the Academy's conclusions which were based on 15 publications (dating back 14 years) with statistically significant increases in risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in the prone position.
Hunt and Shannon complained that the data are "preliminary" and might lead to "iatrogenic disasters," as though the use of the prone position was novel and had unknown consequences, ignoring centuries of experience with the supine position in Asian cultures, which have extraordinarily low rates of SIDS