After years of progress in reducing the number of babies that succumb to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), the National Institutes of Health has terminated its participation in the Safe to Sleep program, STAT News reported last week. The program encouraged parents to practice a suite of evidence-based safety practices when putting their infants to sleep, including placing them on their backs instead of their stomachs. It has been credited with a 50 percent reduction in SIDS deaths since its inception in 1994. Despite the progress, there is still more to do: In 2022, the last year for which there was data, about 3,700 babies died suddenly and unexpectedly, according to the CDC.
The federal government has not offered any explanation as to why the program was canceled. In an email to Mother Jones, an NIH spokesperson wrote that information from the Safe to Sleep campaign linked to the website, adding that materials “remain available to the public, and we encourage individuals to visit to access these resources. ” The spokesperson then noted, “No final decision has been made regarding the future” of the program.
In light of the NIH’s initial announcement of terminating its program involvement, it’s worth noting that Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine advocacy group that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. used to chair, has long promoted false claims about an association between vaccines and SIDS.
It wasn’t just the group that promoted this misinformation—it was RFK Jr. himself. In 2023, for example, he posted to his 5.5 million followers on X about a statistical analysis study that claimed to find a correlation between number of vaccines given and infant mortality, saying the “new peer-reviewed study found a positive statistical correlation between infant mortality rates and the number of vaccine doses received by babies—confirming findings made by the same researchers a decade ago.” (Both the recent and the older study had several methodological flaws, as surgeon and pseudoscience debunker David Gorski wrote in Science-Based Medicine.)
Last year on X, Kennedy claimed that the CDC had suppressed the link between SIDS and a vaccine that prevented diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus. (The vaccine that the letter referred to isn’t used anymore, and multiple studies since then have shown no connection between vaccines and SIDS.) Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services oversees the National Institutes of Health, the agency that made the decision to cancel the Safe to Sleep program.
Once news of NIH’s cancellation broke, it didn’t take long for anti-vaccine activists to seize the opportunity to promote SIDS misinformation on social media. On April 30, the same day STAT’s story was published, Children’s Health Defense posted to its 287,000 followers on X, “There is an undeniable link between vaccines and sudden infant death syndrome.” It followed up with a similar post the next day. On May 3, anti-vaccine activist Steve Kirsch suggested to his 599,000 followers that the recent death of a pair of Idaho twins was caused by vaccines. “We’ve seen SIDS cases before,” he wrote. “With twins and no other causes such as CO poisoning, the most likely cause is a vaccine-mediated death.” (The deaths are currently being investigated as a homicide, local news outlets report.) On May 4, an X account called A Midwestern Doctor posted to 248,000 followers “Our government has known for a century that vaccines cause SIDS, but like COVID vaccine injuries, they kept covering it up.”
The agency had made the decision during the first uptick in infant deaths in the three decades that the program has existed; between 2020 and 2022, the last year for which data is available, a recent study found, rates increased by 12 percent. Experts can’t explain the sudden reversal of the decades-long decline; experts list Covid, maternal opioid use, and safe-sleep misinformation on social media as theories, the New York Times reported in January. In the wake of NIH’s decision, nonprofits are scrambling to keep the program going, NPR reported this week.
The cancellation of Safe to Sleep comes at a time when leaders at the highest levels of the Trump administration are calling on Americans to have more babies. The agency’s recent decision has sparked outrage on social media, especially from people for whom SIDS is personal. As one X user put it in a post linking to STAT’s story, “My twin brother died of SIDS in his crib when we were a couple weeks old. Not many Americans at all support [the decision to terminate the program]—I know that much—but in the off chance any do, I’d highly recommend they stay far the hell away from me.”
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.