Comment by emodendroket
2 years ago
Some measures that reportedly reduce “SIDS” include assembling the crib properly and not putting soft objects that could smother the baby in the crib. Risk factors include lower parental educational attainment. You tell me if I’m being unreasonable attributing a death from the crib collapsing to suffocation and not a mysterious, poorly understood disease. When a baby dies in the crib it is rare for much investigation to be done that would conclusively suggest suffocation and it is usually just labeled SIDS.
I mean, I don't mind, you can attribute whatever to whatever and yeah, a crib full of plush toys doesn't seem like such a smart idea... but the question is what a doctor should do, how we want them to behave in the face of limited evidence.
SIDS is intended as a diagnosis of last resort but is often used with little digging so it's not really any different than the case this article discusses, except with the opposite result. I never demanded that doctors start doing something different but I think it's pretty obvious we're just collectively leaving some stones unturned here.