06-20-2022, 12:31 AM
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is a very interesting phenomenon when you actually delve into the specifics. On the surface, it makes sense: children are vulnerable while young, and require care to ensure they don’t randomly die. The highest SIDS risk for children is in those under 6m of age, and pretty much completely disappears by the age of one. Pretty scary right? Imagine your baby being carried to term, born, and then ‘randomly’ dying in the night. Everyone needs to be worried about random child death! Except, what if there are some hidden factors not discussed? If we look at other medical phenomenon, say AIDS and COVID, it’s clear that there is not an equal risk of ‘randomly’ dying from COVID or AIDS across every single person. Obese, diabetic, and generally unhealthy people have a higher risk of dying from COVID (certain races too), and homosexuals are more likely to die from AIDS. That being said COVID was marketed as total death for all, no fine detail ever expressed about comparative death rates, and originally fear was spread that AIDS had an equal risk to all (some too now for Monkeypox), so what about SIDS? Does every baby have the same risk of randomly dying? No, they don’t. There are several factors at play, and SIDS (largely), like the downplaying of AIDS effect on homosexuals, is a phenomenon that really only effects certain demographics and is downplayed because of progressive reasons. Let’s have a look at who is more likely to have a child die from SIDS, what risk factors actually put your child at risk, and why SIDS is discussed in this obscure manner, instead of honestly.
First, here is some of the typical obscuring language that is used. An Australian government health website states that “By removing known risk factors and providing a safe sleeping environment, most of these deaths are preventable.”[1] So, on the basis of this sentence, it appears that SIDS is an environmental problem considering that “most” of these deaths can be prevented. That is true on the basis of in most cases, if you put a baby in the right environment, they won’t die, however is the cause of SIDS deaths environmental? Here are some of the risk factors for SIDS covered in a medical journal article: “inadequate prenatal care, low birth weight (<2499gr), premature infants, intrauterine growth delay, short interval between pregnancies and maternal substance use (tobacco, alcohol, opiates).”[2] You might notice right away that none of these risk factors involve laying a baby the wrong way, putting pillows in a cot, etc., all environmental factors. They are instead referring to more genetic and lifestyle factors. In fact, you’ll understand all you need to know about SIDS from this single line from a journal article on SIDS titled ‘Sudden Infant Death and Social Justice’ which states that “these [SIDS] deaths are most common among poor and marginalized people in wealthy countries, including U.S. Blacks, American Indians/Alaskan Natives, New Zealand Māori, Australian Aborigines, indigenous Canadians, and low‐income British people.”[3] Again, none of these factors are environmental, which is how SIDS is often discussed, that you ‘must sleep your baby the right way’ as if the sole cause of SIDS is equal, instead of it largely being localised to certain groups. In much the same way that the obfuscate homosexual AIDS rates/death with the euphemised “people who engage in homosexual sex”, thereby deflecting from demographics and centralised groups, we move into theories of causality where deaths/illness occur not from specific inability to be healthy/make healthy choices (such as putting your child to sleep correctly) but instead from more general, almost miasma like theories of health, wherein certain arrangements of reality lead to death, not that certain people arrange society in ways that cause death.
When examining SIDS there are two primary elements that should be examined to understand the ‘syndrome.’ The first, as I have briefly touched on, is that SIDS realistically is eugenic on the basis that the greatest risk lies with low genetic stock parents. We see this most clearly in the racial demographics, but other factors such as short interval between pregnancies (i.e., poor family planning, more r-selected parents, lower IQ) and substance abuse. However, just because bad parents create conditions that kill their kids doesn’t mean that good parents might not also engage in risky behaviours that also kill their kid, right? This leads to the second element of SIDS that is not discussed, which is that many of the ‘risky’ behaviours we denounce now are in many cases used by demographics with low SIDS risks. Back in the ‘Sudden Infant Death and Social Justice’ article you’ll find the following line: “In 2016, the U.S. AAP also issued guidance acknowledging similar risk factors but maintained a more authoritative, less nuanced anti‐bed sharing stance (Ball, 2017a). For instance, it advised all parents to conduct night‐time feedings in the adult bed but then to return the infant to a separate sleeping area (Task Force On Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, 2016).”[3] Other articles seemingly confirm that “infant-parent co-sleeping as a risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome.”[4] So it appears bed sharing, or rather that harmful environments in general cause SIDS, so presumably even intelligent, White parents could accidentally kill their kids. Except this isn’t true either. “In Japan, many parents sleep next to their baby on bamboo or straw mats, or on futons. Some parents simply room-share by putting the baby in a crib or bassinet that is kept within arm's reach of the bed. Most cultures that routinely practice cosleeping, in any form, have very rare instances of SIDS. SIDS occurrences are among the lowest in the world in Hong Kong, where cosleeping is extremely common.”[5] There is a degree of pilpul used commonly to try and again obfuscate that it is not a general, equal risk of SIDS when bed sharing but trying to offer a distinction between bed sharing and co-sleeping. One article describes co-sleeping as “sharing a sleeping surface”[6] which is apparently different to sharing the sleeping surface of a bed, since the sleeping surface was a Japanese futon. Despite common bed sharing/co-sleeping, Japanese people have a 1/20th rate of SIDS compared to blacks in America, 1/8th compared to Whites.[7] Ultimately, it is demonstrable that co-sleeping/bed sharing, in some cases, does not present with a high risks of SIDS, so it cannot ultimately be just environmental. Coupled with the fact that demographic factors such as race and IQ level are ultimately more causal (by this I mean control for environmental factors has less of an impact than control by demographic factors) it is clear that SIDS is not the type of issue that it is commonly referred to as. SIDS is instead indicative of negligence and poor parenting (some studies also indicate a certain percent of SIDS deaths are murder, but are covered up/not properly diagnosed as infanticide[8]) and not actually a devastating and random chance that your child will die.
But why does this matter? There are a few crucial reasons. First, knowing that low IQ and non-white (tautology) parents have a greater risk at having their own children die is informative, from a racist perspective, but also from a generalist perspective. More of these people (immigrants) creates a larger burden for healthcare, ensuring parents are ‘informed’, but it also creates more dead children in your country, which ostensibly most people wish to avoid. However, the most important reason that this knowledge is valuable, and should be discussed in the proper context, is that it has an overwhelming impact on new mothers when they are forced to internalize the idea that they have a risk of killing their own children. What a pernicious thought, that you cannot even sleep in the same bed as your child, without putting their life at risk. I’m sure you can already understand what social forces welcome such a burden, to pathologize a natural and healthy urge of mothers. Worse is that it is the parents at the highest risks of SIDS that will ignore their risk, through their own stupidity, but the more K-selected parents will fret most. SIDS risks are inversely correlated with the amount of worry the parent will expend on it. This ‘equalising’ rhetoric of modern health, being unable to frankly address problem demographics and factors at their root (something we saw all too plainly with COVID) means that the burden which should most heavily be felt on the lower elements of society is redistributed to the normal, better elements, so that nobody has to ever point out that it is because of your race, or low intelligence, that you are more likely to have your child die. Like distributing police equally among every demographic, instead of targeting demographics at a higher risk of crime, you are forcing innocent people, who have less to do with the problem than others, to shoulder a burden they should not, and there is no worse people to add extra psychological harm onto than new mothers, especially in this case mothers of a higher calibre than the actual people having their kids ending up dead. Again it is indicative of general social dysfunction that not only are people unwilling to discuss, as a matter of fact, what the actual dynamics of a problem are, but also that professionals engage this problem in a dishonest manner.
Small disclaimer: I did not discuss smoking at all, however this is a genetically 'neutral' factor in that by all reports it is smoke residue from 2nd and 3rd hand smoke that have an impact on a newborn's respiratory function. This means regardless of your intelligence/race, it is an actual environmental cause. There is of course some correlation anyway between lower IQ/life outcomes and smoking habits, therefore overlapping to a certain degree, however, it is largely irrelevant to the inability for medical professionals to discuss this matter frankly, but should still be accounted as a neutral factor and not totally ignored.
References:
[1] Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) | healthdirect
[2] The factors contributing to the risk of sudden infant death syndrome - PMC (nih.gov)
[3] Sudden infant death and social justice: A syndemics approach - PMC (nih.gov)
[4] An 8 year study of risk factors for SIDS: bed‐sharing versus non‐bed‐sharing - PMC (nih.gov)
[5] Cosleeping Around The World - The Natural Child Project
[6] Circumstances and factors of sleep-related sudden infancy deaths in Japan - PMC (nih.gov)
[7] Infant Mortality | Maternal and Infant Health | Reproductive Health | CDC & https://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl...ne.0233253
[8] Ten Percent of SIDS Cases are Murder — or are They? - PMC (nih.gov)
First, here is some of the typical obscuring language that is used. An Australian government health website states that “By removing known risk factors and providing a safe sleeping environment, most of these deaths are preventable.”[1] So, on the basis of this sentence, it appears that SIDS is an environmental problem considering that “most” of these deaths can be prevented. That is true on the basis of in most cases, if you put a baby in the right environment, they won’t die, however is the cause of SIDS deaths environmental? Here are some of the risk factors for SIDS covered in a medical journal article: “inadequate prenatal care, low birth weight (<2499gr), premature infants, intrauterine growth delay, short interval between pregnancies and maternal substance use (tobacco, alcohol, opiates).”[2] You might notice right away that none of these risk factors involve laying a baby the wrong way, putting pillows in a cot, etc., all environmental factors. They are instead referring to more genetic and lifestyle factors. In fact, you’ll understand all you need to know about SIDS from this single line from a journal article on SIDS titled ‘Sudden Infant Death and Social Justice’ which states that “these [SIDS] deaths are most common among poor and marginalized people in wealthy countries, including U.S. Blacks, American Indians/Alaskan Natives, New Zealand Māori, Australian Aborigines, indigenous Canadians, and low‐income British people.”[3] Again, none of these factors are environmental, which is how SIDS is often discussed, that you ‘must sleep your baby the right way’ as if the sole cause of SIDS is equal, instead of it largely being localised to certain groups. In much the same way that the obfuscate homosexual AIDS rates/death with the euphemised “people who engage in homosexual sex”, thereby deflecting from demographics and centralised groups, we move into theories of causality where deaths/illness occur not from specific inability to be healthy/make healthy choices (such as putting your child to sleep correctly) but instead from more general, almost miasma like theories of health, wherein certain arrangements of reality lead to death, not that certain people arrange society in ways that cause death.
When examining SIDS there are two primary elements that should be examined to understand the ‘syndrome.’ The first, as I have briefly touched on, is that SIDS realistically is eugenic on the basis that the greatest risk lies with low genetic stock parents. We see this most clearly in the racial demographics, but other factors such as short interval between pregnancies (i.e., poor family planning, more r-selected parents, lower IQ) and substance abuse. However, just because bad parents create conditions that kill their kids doesn’t mean that good parents might not also engage in risky behaviours that also kill their kid, right? This leads to the second element of SIDS that is not discussed, which is that many of the ‘risky’ behaviours we denounce now are in many cases used by demographics with low SIDS risks. Back in the ‘Sudden Infant Death and Social Justice’ article you’ll find the following line: “In 2016, the U.S. AAP also issued guidance acknowledging similar risk factors but maintained a more authoritative, less nuanced anti‐bed sharing stance (Ball, 2017a). For instance, it advised all parents to conduct night‐time feedings in the adult bed but then to return the infant to a separate sleeping area (Task Force On Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, 2016).”[3] Other articles seemingly confirm that “infant-parent co-sleeping as a risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome.”[4] So it appears bed sharing, or rather that harmful environments in general cause SIDS, so presumably even intelligent, White parents could accidentally kill their kids. Except this isn’t true either. “In Japan, many parents sleep next to their baby on bamboo or straw mats, or on futons. Some parents simply room-share by putting the baby in a crib or bassinet that is kept within arm's reach of the bed. Most cultures that routinely practice cosleeping, in any form, have very rare instances of SIDS. SIDS occurrences are among the lowest in the world in Hong Kong, where cosleeping is extremely common.”[5] There is a degree of pilpul used commonly to try and again obfuscate that it is not a general, equal risk of SIDS when bed sharing but trying to offer a distinction between bed sharing and co-sleeping. One article describes co-sleeping as “sharing a sleeping surface”[6] which is apparently different to sharing the sleeping surface of a bed, since the sleeping surface was a Japanese futon. Despite common bed sharing/co-sleeping, Japanese people have a 1/20th rate of SIDS compared to blacks in America, 1/8th compared to Whites.[7] Ultimately, it is demonstrable that co-sleeping/bed sharing, in some cases, does not present with a high risks of SIDS, so it cannot ultimately be just environmental. Coupled with the fact that demographic factors such as race and IQ level are ultimately more causal (by this I mean control for environmental factors has less of an impact than control by demographic factors) it is clear that SIDS is not the type of issue that it is commonly referred to as. SIDS is instead indicative of negligence and poor parenting (some studies also indicate a certain percent of SIDS deaths are murder, but are covered up/not properly diagnosed as infanticide[8]) and not actually a devastating and random chance that your child will die.
But why does this matter? There are a few crucial reasons. First, knowing that low IQ and non-white (tautology) parents have a greater risk at having their own children die is informative, from a racist perspective, but also from a generalist perspective. More of these people (immigrants) creates a larger burden for healthcare, ensuring parents are ‘informed’, but it also creates more dead children in your country, which ostensibly most people wish to avoid. However, the most important reason that this knowledge is valuable, and should be discussed in the proper context, is that it has an overwhelming impact on new mothers when they are forced to internalize the idea that they have a risk of killing their own children. What a pernicious thought, that you cannot even sleep in the same bed as your child, without putting their life at risk. I’m sure you can already understand what social forces welcome such a burden, to pathologize a natural and healthy urge of mothers. Worse is that it is the parents at the highest risks of SIDS that will ignore their risk, through their own stupidity, but the more K-selected parents will fret most. SIDS risks are inversely correlated with the amount of worry the parent will expend on it. This ‘equalising’ rhetoric of modern health, being unable to frankly address problem demographics and factors at their root (something we saw all too plainly with COVID) means that the burden which should most heavily be felt on the lower elements of society is redistributed to the normal, better elements, so that nobody has to ever point out that it is because of your race, or low intelligence, that you are more likely to have your child die. Like distributing police equally among every demographic, instead of targeting demographics at a higher risk of crime, you are forcing innocent people, who have less to do with the problem than others, to shoulder a burden they should not, and there is no worse people to add extra psychological harm onto than new mothers, especially in this case mothers of a higher calibre than the actual people having their kids ending up dead. Again it is indicative of general social dysfunction that not only are people unwilling to discuss, as a matter of fact, what the actual dynamics of a problem are, but also that professionals engage this problem in a dishonest manner.
Small disclaimer: I did not discuss smoking at all, however this is a genetically 'neutral' factor in that by all reports it is smoke residue from 2nd and 3rd hand smoke that have an impact on a newborn's respiratory function. This means regardless of your intelligence/race, it is an actual environmental cause. There is of course some correlation anyway between lower IQ/life outcomes and smoking habits, therefore overlapping to a certain degree, however, it is largely irrelevant to the inability for medical professionals to discuss this matter frankly, but should still be accounted as a neutral factor and not totally ignored.
References:
[1] Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) | healthdirect
[2] The factors contributing to the risk of sudden infant death syndrome - PMC (nih.gov)
[3] Sudden infant death and social justice: A syndemics approach - PMC (nih.gov)
[4] An 8 year study of risk factors for SIDS: bed‐sharing versus non‐bed‐sharing - PMC (nih.gov)
[5] Cosleeping Around The World - The Natural Child Project
[6] Circumstances and factors of sleep-related sudden infancy deaths in Japan - PMC (nih.gov)
[7] Infant Mortality | Maternal and Infant Health | Reproductive Health | CDC & https://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl...ne.0233253
[8] Ten Percent of SIDS Cases are Murder — or are They? - PMC (nih.gov)