May/1998
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THE DEATH OF INNOCENTS: A TRUE STORY OF MURDER,
MEDICINE, AND HIGH STAKES SCIENCE.
Richard Firstman and Jamie Talan (Bantam Books, 1997, 632 pages, hardcover, $24.95)
Reviewed by Lynne Lamberg
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No one knows why more than 3,000 apparently well babies
die in their sleep in the US every year. The role of sleep-disordered
breathing, or sleep apnea, in the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
remains unclear. In 1972, an article in the journal Pediatrics by
physician Alfred Steinschneider on the deaths of 5 children in one
family suggested that sleep apnea was THE cause, that SIDS could
run in families, and that it could be prevented.
The report spawned a multi-million dollar industry in infant
apnea monitors used in the home by anxious parents. But the
conclusions in the landmark Pediatrics article were fatally flawed. A
jury concluded in 1995 that the mother described in that report had
killed her children. Infanticide also figured in other so-called multiple
SIDS deaths. In an editorial published in October, 1997, Pediatrics
repudiated its publication of the 1972 Steinschneider article.
In the early 1990s, the nation's pediatricians started to advise
parents to put babies to sleep on their backs. This tactic has cut the
SIDS rate in recent years by a dramatic 30 percent.
The authors of this book, a husband and wife team of prize-
winning journalists, interviewed more than 300 persons: physicians
and other scientists, nurses, relatives of the children who died,
neighbors, police investigators, lawyers, and others. They reviewed
thousands of pages of medical records, trial testimony, police files,
private correspondence, and government documents,
communicating the facts and the feel of the events with page-turning
immediacy. The book exemplifies investigative and medical
reporting at its best.
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