Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
I honestly don't know what to think about this...Sue
Simultaneous death exceptionally rare
Tuesday, March 24, 1998
Gene Collier, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The medical professionals were still groping the glossary yesterday for
some
suitable depiction of what happened to Teira and Keira Johnson.
The infant twins died the night of Feb. 26.
"Bizarre, atypical," were two of the words Allegheny County Coroner Dr.
Cyril Wecht threw out a couple of minutes into the news conference he
held
to release his findings. "The odds are astronomical ... They're
infinitesimally
low."
Wecht ruled that the twin girls were essentially simultaneous victims of
Sudden
Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, which is also the forensic acronym for
We
Don't Know.
"That's all SIDS is," said Dr. Michael Malloy of the University of Texas
Medical Branch at Galveston. "It's what you've got when you've excluded
everything else."
Malloy, whose research has shown twins to be six times as likely to
experience SIDS as babies born individually, said there might be only
one
case of simultaneous SIDS in this country in any five-year period.
The Johnson girls, not yet 3 months old, turned up dead on an
overstuffed
pillow on the floor of the apartment they shared with a 4-year-old
sibling and
their mother, Tammy Crable, in the hopeless public housing of Allequippa
Terrace the morning of Feb. 27. Neighbors immediately blamed carbon
monoxide from gas stoves they often run in what they said were poorly
heated
or unheated units.
Wecht ruled that out almost immediately. He'd ruled everything else out
by
yesterday, including homicide.
"We simply do not feel that there is anything that could have been done
that
hasn't been done by way of medical investigation," Wecht told a platoon
of
media and a handful of friends of the twins' family. "We also had the
benefit of
this case of a good (death) scene investigation by police and homicide
detectives. In subsequent interrogation of the parents by the detectives
and a
second round of interrogation and voluntary submission to polygraph
testing --
I emphasize the word voluntary; these parents have been most
cooperative,
completely unhesitant in responding to these requests -- and both of the
polygraph tests (of Crable and Jason Johnson, the father) were very
strong
and unequivocal.
"So while it gives us no satisfaction to come to this conclusion, we do
so
without hesitation."
There are pockets of the medical community where the belief that a
considerable number of SIDS deaths are homicides still flourishes,
especially
as it considers cases in which more than one child dies. Wecht, who has
criticized this thinking in his various writings, lashed out at it again
yesterday.
"There are colleagues of mine who are skeptical, I think cynical would
be a
better word, in these cases of multiple deaths in the same family,
whether they
occur simultaneously or years apart," Wecht said. "Some have gone as far
as
to say where one death in a family is SIDS the other is likely homicide.
I
strongly disagree with that. I think it's an extremely unwise, improper,
and I
would go so far as to say unprofessional and immoral attitude to take.
"If you think of the fact that we do not know the cause of SIDS, than
how can
we say so smugly and complacently that it's impossible for two deaths to
occur in and around the same time?"
Wecht cited a 1986 paper by Dr. John E. Smialek at the University of
Maryland that detailed nine cases of simultaneous SIDS, eight in this
country
and one in Belgium, and a 1989 study that showed 39 instances worldwide.
So it is not as though the parents of Teira and Keira bypassed the
chances of
winning the state lottery to arrive at the chances of losing twins to
simultaneous
SIDS.
"No, they didn't go that far; it's difficult to put a one-in-a-million
kind of thing
on it," said Malloy. "But it's very unusual."
Only first described little more than 30 years ago, SIDS and its
research have
given the medical community only vague direction to a cause, much less a
cure.
"We've still got nothing definite," Malloy said. "It'll probably be
multi-factorial.
It may well have to do with the cardio-respiratory vulnerability of
infants in a
particular range, one to six months. Positioning of the infant seems to
make
some difference. Since 1992, after the American Academy of Pediatricians
promoted sleeping on the back, prone position SIDS cases have dropped 70
percent."
Wecht said the Johnson twins slept on their bellies.
"Was this an enhancing factor? It certainly is conceivable," Wecht said.
"But
nothing that would rise to the level of negligence. I would like to have
a
ten-dollar bill in my pocket right now for every parent who continues to
put
the baby to bed lying on its abdomen."
Rather than rise to the level of negligence, it rather sinks to the
level of
unthinkable bad luck.
"We hope," Wecht said, "that our findings, negative as they are,
contribute to
the literature."
--
Two rules in life:
1. Don't tell people everything you know.
2.
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