Studying sudden infant death syndrome in a developing country.

See related article on page 21 The biblical quotation above is evidence that children have been dying in their sleep since antiquity, although this phenomenon has been described by several names. Even up to the 1950s physicians commonly thought that infants dying suddenly and unexpectedly had either smothered in their own bedding, or that an adult had “overlaid” them. I never heard of crib death during my training in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was not mentioned in pediatric textbooks and no organized research was taking place. That might still be the case today were it not for the indignation of several American parents who lost infants. They would not accept the veil of ignorance surrounding crib death, nor, more importantly, the absence of any effort to accumulate knowledge about the condition.1