Death of Innocents

I am a Crown Prosecutor (i.e. District Attorney) in Australia, and this is the best, the very best, true crime book that I have ever read. I couldn't put it down. I was so upset when I had finished it.

Death of Innocents is a compelling non-fiction that opens the eyes of the reader. The authors have painstakingly laid out the subject of infantcide by parent. They show the growth of SIDS in the medical community as SIDS becomes the answer for all deaths of infants under one year. We find out that some of our true doers of justice just cannot be convinced that particular cases after extreme and lengthy investigaton can be diagnosed as SIDS or of other organic causes. This book is a must read for anyone who is interested in finding out some of the history and causes behind death of infants.

This book was > according to Frederick Busch, who reviewed it for The New York Times.<p>The quote above just about says it all. The book read like fiction and was carefully detailed. All of the medical terminology was easily understood and thoroughly explained. The authors stated that the theme of the book is "the emotionally-charged intersection of SIDS and infanticide."<p>Almost all of what we have known of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) for the last 20 years was based on work done by Dr. Alfred Steinschneider in upstate New York. His findings were based primarily on two children (Molly and Noah Hoyt) who died while under his care in the early 1970s, following the deaths of three of their siblings in previous years. Steinschneider thus "determined/concluded" that SIDS was familial and caused by apnea (pauses in breathing while sleeping). To combat these deaths, he pushed the use of home monitors for babies who were considered "at risk". His landmark paper in 1972 in The Journal of Pediatrics shaped medical thinking for the next 20 years. Yet he had used only a tiny sample and had no control group. This article and subsequent ones cleared peer review committees despite obvious flaws. He arranged facts to fit his theory over the next years. His fundamental deception/fabrication was that apnea episodes were documented in the hospital for the two children who died --but there was NO documentation!! In fact, Steinschneider had repeatedly ignored concerns of the pediatric nursing staff about the mother, Waneta Hoyt.<p>I found it incredible that a hypothesis was presented and accepted by the medical community based on only 5 cases and 2 deaths! I think this shows how desperate people were for a quick way to predict and prevent SIDS. Because of the prevalence and acceptance of this theory, Munchausen Syndrome by Prozy (when a parent, usually a mother, harms or kills a child, usually to get attention) was rarely considered when a very young child died.<p>In the next 20 years, the monitor business became a multi-million dollar business and many people got rich from it. Steinschneider himself never owned stock in any monitor company, but his research was underwritten by one of them, Healthdyne, whose fortunes then became dependent on the doctor's continuing research findings about apnea. A vicious circle! Also, leading SIDS researchers conducted seminars, which were funded by Healthdyne grants, then gave out information on monitors to the participants.<p>What particularly disturbed me was the fact that Dr. David Southall, from England, had refuted Steinschneider's theories and proven them to be false with very extensive research of his own But until the 1986 Apnea Consensus Conference, no one appeared to listen to him. This conference was the first time that Steinschneider's theory was formally investigated or questioned by an official group of his peers.<p>In the early 90s, a coincidental series of events led a district attorney in upstate NY to be

Pediatricians as well as clinical researchers will not only enjoy this book but will find that it will help them in their practice. Arrogance in the practice of medicine as well as research continues to be as much a problem today as it was during the 20 year span that events of the book were described. We as medical researchers must constantly question our own research as well as that of others. I have made this book required reading by the pediatric residents I work with. It has provoked great discussions with my peers as well as my students. It is a great narrative of a tragedy and easy to read by those in the field as well as the lay public.Ron Sklar M.D. Portland, Oregon