Chris Bacon, former adviser to the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths, said that while he welcomed the "invaluable" data acquired from the Care of Next Infant programme (Children Now, 12-18 January), he was concerned that cases where the causes were ambiguous had been classified as natural, resulting in the statistic that nine out of 10 deaths were natural.
"The research may have been influenced by legal principle that you can be innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt," he said. "In scientific debate you don't do this."
Robert Carpenter, co-author of the research, said sudden infant deaths could not be compared to conditions where all the causes were known.
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