From Christine Hiley
Peter Hadfield’s describes how the Japanese government was years behind the
rest of the world in giving parents advice about sleeping position and cot death
(Forum, 13 March, p 58).
But some might say that doctors in the US were also reluctant to accept the
connection between sleeping position and sudden infant death syndrome. There was
a suggestion that cot death in the US was a different syndrome from that in
Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Hadfield refers to the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics
about sleeping position, which were published in Pediatrics, the
academy’s journal, in June 1992. He implies that this was the standard that the
Japanese should have met.
However, there was an extraordinarily blustering rebuke in the next issue of
the journal from other paediatricians attacking what they regarded as
precipitate action by the academy. The authors said that “medical history is
unfortunately replete with examples of precipitous action based on preliminary
data and resulting in harm”.
Advertisement
Japanese authorities were slow to see that cot death and sleeping position
were related. The American authorities were too. Only in June 1994, two and a
half years after the beginning of our British campaign and more than three years
after the New Zealand campaign, did the public health authorities in the US
launch an official campaign, once they had finally been given definitive
consensus opinion by their paediatrics advisers.
London
