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Researchers Find Clue to SIDS Early Detection
SpaceAdmiral writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that scientists have found babies who die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) tend to have an abnormality in their brain stem. By linking SIDS to a biological cause, it may now be possible to test for the abnormality and treat babies at risk of SIDS."
While this will possibly one day be good news, the number of tests for pregnant mothers and babies is just astounding. It turns into a situation where pregnant women are told "you have a 1 in 4000 chance that your child has X," which creates a lot of worry and concern for what in 3,999 out of 4,000 cases is nothing.
Frequently, these tests are for things that can't be cured, or that have experimental cures that are sanctioned by the American Societies of Obstetrics/Pediatricians, but the treatment success rate isn't known, nor are the potential harms of a lot of the "cures."
I'm not belittling the science here, nor am I saying that this isn't a good thing, I'm just pointing out a human cost here -- the stress levels for tests and procedures during these stages of development are very high, and it is an extremely rare doctor who will/can admit that their procedures are experimental.
If you're pregnant or have a small child, do some research on the tests you'll be given. You'll be amazed at what you discover.
After scanning the posts on this topic, I crave a -1 Inhumanly Tasteless moderation option.
I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.
You mean, like not putting the baby in a cage in another room, where it can't queue its own breathing off of its mother's? They don't call it "crib death" for no reason.
Natural selection is, in the most basic form, eliminating those traits that do not survive in whatever the current environment is. In this case, assuming that a defect transforms from near certain fatality to usually treatable, even if through human advancement of the 'environment', the environment simply has changed to not weed out that attribute, one way or another.
Really, if you want to have the heartiest gene pool with respect to the whole natural selection scheme of things, you keep everyone alive you can within reason, even if no apparent benefit can be objectively realized for their apparent defect. The whole deal is that when the environment changes, bizarre things can happen and the more genetic diversity your population has, the more able it is to survive radical changes.
An example is sickle-cell anemia, most common people with an incomplete grasp of natural selection would think 'that sucks, let nature eliminate that gene from the pool!'. However in the incomplete dominance model it happens to behave, a person heterozygous for sickle cell anemia happens to be much more resistant to malaria.
In the case of this article, let's assume some neurological pathogen suddenly becomes ubiquitous to the human environment, and somehow the brain stem 'defect' shields those with the trait. Assume this preliminary research is correct and leads to a cure for SIDS, for the sake of discussion. You have a hearty population with a now harmless defect that would be the only survivors. If SIDS wipes out that 'defect' and such a weird pathogen came, the species goes extinct.
To be trekkie for a moment, a good demonstration is when the TNG crew came upon a planet that eliminated all defective conceptions to not deal with the associated problems. However, their planet was saved from obliteration based on technology in Geordi's visor, which never would have come about in a society where they avoided having to make such a device. The principle is interesting fodder for science fiction, and that I think illustrates well the pitfall of 'let only the best go on'. Best is always relative to the current status quo, which is never unchangeable.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If you understood natural selection, 'diluting' the population is never bad. Genetic diversity to the extent that a species can pull it off always means more flexibility. See my other post around here.
For example, picture the population genetic diversity represented as a bell curve, with the 'optimum' being the modal value. This curve comes about from a whole set of selection pressures, which in an abstract way in this example maps in the aggregate toward that modal value being allowed to survive.
If your gene pool is 'more pure', You have a very very steep curve with a very small stardard deviation. Suddenly some aspect of the environment shapes the landscape such that anyone within two standard deviations of that particular curve would die off, leaving a small percentage of population which may or may not be viable, with a high chance of not being viable.
Now picture a 'dilute' population all over the place with maybe a peak, maybe barely discernible. Now the same calamity comes about and wipes out exactly what would have been two standard deviations of the previously mentioned curve, but now it's only maybe a half of one standard deviation in this, and new curve or curves form to accommodate the calamity from the much more likely viable remaining population.
This is a really abstract graphical way to complement the physical examples given elsewhere.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I think it's pretty obvious we're diluting our gene pool with a bunch of shit (the rise of nearsightedness seems like an obvious one to me), a huge number of diseases have their symptoms treated without the problem being fixed. When these people have kids.. they're just perpetuating the decline.
Depends on how you look at it. Yes, as someone who is nearsighted I would probably be dead as a caveman (well, maybe not, I'm only 20/50 but say I was 20/100 or something) because I would lack the basic skills necessary to find food and protect myself (ie, the ability to see prey and predators from a distance).
However this is not the caveman days, and to succeed today, peak physical condition is generally not as much of a requirement as a well functioning brain. So over time, this species is getting a lot smarter, and a lot less physically fit, but what does it matter? That IS natural selection, important attributes flourish, unimportant ones do not.
If an all out nuclear war drops us back into the stone age, then yes the vast majority of us will not be hardy enough to survive (nor will most posses the skills necessary to survive without a walmart). So then there will be massive diebacks, and natural selection will continue to work as always under these new requirements.
Basically, Stephen Hawking is a pretty good example of this. He would be a total liability to any stone age tribe and would be long dead by now if he lived in that scenario. As it stands now, I do not consider it a bad thing that we live in a period of time where he is able to contribute to society and not be a liability.
Finkployd
There are three reasons (off the top of my head) that one might want to know beforehand:
1. Termination. You might not terminate a Down's-positive fetus, but some people do, especially if it looks like they're going to die anyway.
2. Treatment. I have heard that some heart defects (which is one of the largest death-related dangers from Down's) can be treated successfully in-utero, before strain on the heart causes complications or death.
3. Preparation. I'm not sure that the moments after giving birth would be the time I'd prefer to recieve the news that my new baby had Down's. I'd prefer to research it beforehand, if that was practical.
- Lea
At least half of that 99% are children.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Natural selection favors traits that allow a species to survive in its environment, not in some other environment, such as the one its forbears inhabited.
So, for example, our forefathers were genetically predisposed to not be allergic to peanuts. That was simply not a trait a specimen could express and survive. Nowadays, with effective diagnosis and cortizone shots and "May contain nuts" labels all over the place, it's something you can live with. Nowadays, lots of people are deathly allergic to peanuts, and those people can breed just like everyone else
Does that mean that the current human species is less fit to survive? Well sure, but only in a habitat substantially different from our own. I kinda doubt we could survive on the ocean floor, either, even though we had ancestors that could. I don't hear any whining about that
I suppose in some gut reaction kind of way, being reliant on modern technology makes us less "tough" as a species, and that rankles. But does it rankle more than babies dying all over the place? Than having to worry if your baby in particular is going to bite it for what seems like no good reason? I hardly think so.
It's not like this "damage" is irreversible, either. Genetic drift aside, traits that don't impact fitness in the current environment will vary randomly, so should conditions change due to the science fiction scenario of your choice, the people who have the "right stuff" will survive just fine.
If you're going to be elitist, it would help to be elite.
Dr. James McKenna is the leading researcher on this issue. Here's an article that discusses his findings on the effects of parental proximity on infant sleep breathing. (For more info about him and his work in general, check out this page.)
Also, I don't think it's mentioned in that article, but most of the recommendations against co-sleeping as SIDS prevention stem from one big New Zealand study (the kiwis have traditionally kept the best statistics on SIDS, so a lot of info comes from their data). That study initially found a statistically significant correlation between co-sleeping and SIDS deaths. However, later re-examination of the data found that, when controlling for maternal smoking (a factor that has been linked to SIDS by several studies), the correlation between co-sleeping and SIDS disappeared. New Zealand has a fairly large Maori population, which both is more likely to smoke and is more likely to co-sleep, and that caused the cross-correlation.
So yes, unless parents have particular health issues which make it unsafe (such as alcohol or drug use, extreme obesity, or certain sleep disorders) co-sleeping is safer than crib-sleeping. Dr. McKenna has found that the beneficial effects of sleeping near Mom extend even to kids in a crib in the same room as their parents, too, so for those with problems that prevent bed-sharing, modified co-sleeping is another way to keep baby safe. The cultural notion that sleep is an intensely private activity that should only be shared with your spouse does interfere with the safety of young children (and not just with SIDS; I remember hearing a story about a two-year-old who woke up in the middle of the night, decided to climb up her dresser, and was found dead in the morning after it toppled onto her... I can't imagine that happening to my two-year-old, since he still sleeps next to us!).
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
I work in emergency medicine (have for many years), and am currently working on my Phd in pharmacy. I have seen first hand infants who have died, and the death attributed to SIDS. I am going to dispel the misconceptions here & now about your comment on "shaking" and other similar accusations.
Shaking or slapping a child causing injury to the brain leaves signs & is easily recognizable. Battle's signs (bruising behind the ears) are prevalent in such a case of abuse, even post mortem. Abuse is easy to spot for a trained professional. Battle's signs is only one of many signs we look for to spot deaths caused by potential abuse. Edema (swelling), contusions or ecchymosis (bruising, which can also be seen on/in the brain during autopsy) are some of the most common signs.
Asphyxiation (suffocation) can be ruled out quickly on scene. Petechial hemorrhages (burst blood vessels) are seen in the eyes, neck and face, if asphyxiation is the cause of death. The signs of this are also present in the lungs post mortem.
SIDS is respiratory in nature. The infant's respiratory system shuts down, which then induces cardiac arrest (due to lack of oxygen from not breathing), then death. There is no visible trauma to an infant that dies of SIDS, external or internal. Extensive testing is done to see if there are any other prevalent problems that may have caused the infants death. Everything is ruled out prior to labeling the cause as SIDS. All possibilities are examined.
It is wonderful that a commonality has been found, which may lead to a better diagnosis of this terrible malady. At the very least, perhaps now this will give doctors a definitive way to determine what children are at risk and allow them to inform parents so that steps can be taken to monitor their children. Training can be given, in the forum of infant CPR (some hospitals now require it of parents, some do not) which can sustain the life of the child until trained medical personnel arrive.
Little is known about why these children stop breathing. The more that can be found out, the better. The children are our future and we had better protect them.
Here are some interesting statistical facts for you:
Most SIDS attributed deaths occur for infants between 2-4 months of age.
SIDS has/can occur in infants under 1yr of age.
"This is America... where the will of the few outweigh the outrage of the many..." - Unknown