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Another SIDS researcher Guiseppe Simonetta says about —_ used rational means to come to conclusions are shunned by his research “we hypothesise that there is some sort of devel- medical authorities. Those, such as Dr Glen Dettman, and opmental problem in utero, involved with hormonal and neu- Dr. Archie Kalokerinos, or the late Robert Mendelsohn, rological development. We use as our model pregnant M.D., who have made connections between infant mortality ewes". How can this be translated to a human problem? and noxious substances, have also made the error of chal- The second stumbling block is that the research is based — lenging the dogmas of respected institutions. These three on the ‘apnoea’ model of cot death. An apnoea is when a _ people have shown that cot death is in fact a multi-factorial baby has a pause in breathing. It insult on a child's immune sys- is argued that babies die because tem. Such an insult, given that they stop breathing (or that their the child initially has a weak- heart stops). This over simplifi- ened immune system, can lead cation is akin to saying that One researcher there has been to sub-clinical scurvy. This someone dying of typhoid dies i imi i means that the ascorbic acid « et ein he performing similar experiments for sie ny — femme a result, most research involves over 15 years in Australia and the lar function is completely laboratory studies of breathing S ievi depleted. When this happens pat lemme Lar ag USA - achieving no breakthroughs — i? ohita dies. Imus. ase eon. sarily found in babies who sub- for human health in that time! sequence, stop breathing hence sequently die of SIDS. the misconception of most with- However, with predominantly in the medical hierarchy. laboratory research using the . (Please note that dogs and wrong model or using selective- many other animals manufac- ly chosen healthy babies out of their natural environment, is _ ture their own vitamin C. Humans do not. So study on these it any wonder that the apnoea model of cot death remains? animals could never find these results.) What is more, Dr. Is it any wonder that SIDS is still a mystery to the National § Dettman, Dr. Kalokerinos and Mendelsohn MD, have impli- SIDS Council? cated medicine's ‘sacred cow’ - the vaccination, as the prima- Affiliated SIDS research is the epitome of medical ry immune insult, and this explains why the public has been research. It grows further from scientific reason annually, deprived of their knowledge. and has been doing so for a quarter of a century. All of this information has been achieved by studying the Methodologies such as clinical study, statistical analysis, histories and symptoms of babies who subsequently died of comparisons of behaviours, diet and context - these are all SIDS. Dr. Kalokerinos observed the increase in deaths of playing second fiddle to supposedly more scientific pursuits. | Aboriginal children (up to 500 out of 1000 children) in out- However, even the Macquarie dictionary defines ‘clinical’ as back Australia. By simply comparing the time of death after "concerned with observations and treatment of disease ina vaccination between the children, the correlation was patient (as distinguished from an artificial experiment)" undoubted. Aborigines had (and still have) a diet deficient (1985). in Vitamin C and this explains why there was a dispropor- Clearly for those who choose to approach any medical _‘tionate number of SIDS cases among Aboriginal children problem with methods which are scientifically founded and compared to non-Aboriginal children. not subject to the arbitrary, misleading nature of most labora- When will funding groups realise that the useful methods tory research, results are more likely to be obtained. of study are also the simplest, safest and least expensive? In this light, independent cot death researchers who have * NEXUS¢37 FT —— 7 — — - — —— — a i ee bine ee ee ee ee ee OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1992