Boy, so much for all that stuff they told me in college about correlation and causation. This one's pretty easy to tear apart, but I'll let you guys have at it first.

"90% of cot deaths in babies are directly linked to mothers who smoke during their pregnancies."

"The researchers have called on the government to ban expectant women from buying tobacco."


http://www.news-medical.net/print_article.asp?id=31226


A new study by a team of British researchers has found a link between cot deaths and mothers who smoke.
The team from Bristol University's Institute of Child Life and Health, say that up to 90% of cot deaths in babies are directly linked to mothers who smoke during their pregnancies.

The Bristol team also say the risk increases with every hour babies are exposed to passive smoke after birth and while the number of cot deaths has fallen, those linked to smoking have risen.

Lead author Professor Peter Fleming, says many other studies have shown a clear link between smoking and cot death, but the Bristol team were interested in establishing the risk of smoking both before and after birth.

They say a baby exposed to smoke eight hours a day was eight times more likely to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) than a baby that was never exposed.

The researchers found that the proportion of babies who went on to die from SIDS who were born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy had risen from 57% to 86%.

The researchers have called on the government to ban expectant women from buying tobacco.

For the study the researchers examined the results of 21 studies relating to smoking and SIDS and found that 9 out of every 10 deaths are reported in babies whose mother's smoked during their pregnancy.

Experts say the evidence suggests smoking is a cause of SIDS, and if all parents stopped smoking tomorrow more than 60 per cent of SIDS deaths would be prevented.

This would mean a drop of SIDS deaths in the UK from around 300 a year to 120 a year.

Though smoking among pregnant women has fallen from 30% to 20% in the last 15 years the researchers suggest that public smoking bans possibly encourage more people to smoke at home.

The researchers believe the government must educate women about the harm that smoking can cause when they become pregnant; current advice states that smoking should only be reduced during a woman's pregnancy rather than stopped altogether.

Each year around 300 babies in Britain 2,500 in the United States between 1 and 4 months of age, die each year from SIDS cot death.

Those numbers have been considerably reduced with successful campaigns advocating laying babies on their backs to sleep.

The report is published in the journal Early Human Development.

A blatant lie..............SIDS, or cot death, crib death; whatever you want to call it, has been around for centuries; hundreds of years before tobacco's existence was even known. If this "study" rang true, how would one explain the thousands of deaths from this before European colonists stumbled upon Native Americans smoking? I would guess that these 21 "studies" were all done on mothers who smoke and not ONE was performed on nonsmoking mothers; therefore they deduced that 90% of SIDS cases were from smoking. In other words, when they looked for cases, rare in themselves, they made sure that only smokers were included. How convenient!

I believe Adolf Hitler banned pregnant women from buying tobacco.

History does indeed repeat itself.

quote:

The researchers found that the proportion of babies who went on to die from SIDS who were born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy had risen from 57% to 86%.

85% of smokers earn less than $45,000/year, many earn much less.

This puts them in the group that has a poorer diet and much less pre-natal health care.

Expectant mothers in this group would also be expected to have poorer health in general.

The 'CAUSE' of SIDS is unknown.

For antis to use this sort of crap is vile,vicious,and filth!
Gary K.

It's always attractive to pin unexplained phenomena on the latest scapegoat.

Just doing some quick research on SIDS gives you an idea of how mysterious the phenomena is. Just from looking on Wikipedia, I found this.

"British former pediatrician Roy Meadow believes that many cases diagnosed as SIDS are really the result of child abuse on the part of a parent displaying Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (a condition which he was first to describe, in 1977). During the 1990s and early 2000s, a number of mothers of multiple apparent SIDS victims were convicted of murder, to varying degrees on the basis of Meadow's opinion. In 2003 a number of high-profile acquittals brought Sir Meadow's theories into disrepute, and many now doubt their credibility. Several hundred murder convictions were reviewed, leading to several high-profile cases being re-opened and convictions overturned."

When children are involved, people have a natural tendency to throw reason out the nearest window in favor of strong emotions. Really, if a child is harmed, all you have to do is scream "Witch!" and very few will take the time to look for evidence before they start casting stones.

According to the same Wikipedia article, SIDS is 50% more prevalent in males than females, so it seems particularly troublesome to make some type of half-assed cause and effect case for SIDS with a highly questionable, correlative tool like epidemiology when there's already a heavy correlative effect taking place. (BTW!: Isn't this the same rocket science that told us earlier in the year that smokers were 50% more likely to have a girl?)

This whole "smoking causes SIDS" thing is just so f**ing dumb, evil and manipulative that overanalyzing it just makes you want to knock yourself out with something just so you can be unconscious and pretend that we don't live in a world that is being overtaken with such shit.

I was writing one of long ramblers here and I've deleted it, because it isn't necessary. It's really a no-brainer.

I hope there's a Hell and I hope that the people who pervade this evil drivel rot in it.

Epidemiology is statistical dog shit.

Winston,
This is off-topic,and I apoligize to the '
Forum'.

I believe that the only real hope we have for defeating these people is with votes,i.e. getting smokers together as a voting group.

I am trying to get started with 'American Smokers Party-Illinois'( http://www.americansmokersparty-illinois.org/ ) and I would like to have your permission to use your material in the website.

I regret the non-slick looks of the site;but, I am a retired air traffic contoller and not an advert type person.

Gary Kayser
gkayser30@aol,com

Gary,

Thank you and of course please take my stuff. It is up for grabs.

I think the site looks good. I've added it to my favorites.