How a supposed preventive measure leads to more complication can be seen by this amazingly true story which every medico knows or must know!
In the novel Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky; it has been mentioned how stress can cause so many diseases and also how it can modify or alter the course of so many diseases!
In one such context you have this amazing history of SIDS!
Now that is not a cool acronym for a video game! It was a scary phenomenon!
As the novel explained parents used to put a normal healthy baby to sleep in the night and in the morning the baby would have passed away to everyones shock and gloom!
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) was thus the sudden, unexplained death of an otherwise healthy baby younger than one year, often occurring during sleep.
While the exact cause is unknown, it is likely a combination of physical vulnerability, environmental factors (like soft bedding or smoking), and developmental stressors.
SIDS is diagnosed only after a full investigation, including autopsy, confirms no other cause of death. Risk is highest between 1-4 months.
Now when you do not know the cause of a disease then you are sure to find many causes!
In the early 1900s, doctors observed that infants who died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) had larger thymus glands compared to ‘other’ babies who died from malnutrition or chronic illnesses.
That was the basic problem!
Because they used malnourished infants as their baseline for “normal,” they assumed the healthy, larger thymuses were enlarged due to a disease called status thymicolymphaticus and were suffocating the babies in their sleep!
Imagine the ‘finding’! There is a gland near your trachea or the breathing pipe and it is enlarged! It may possibly choke the infant!
Sounds ‘scientific’ enough! Unfortunately it was all an ‘incidental’ finding and the most difficult issue here was you cannot simply TAKE OUT the thymus! It was a tricky surgery especially for an infant!
Then comes the RADICAL solution!
To prevent this supposed suffocation, doctors routinely prescribed radiation therapy to the necks and chests of babies to shrink their thymus glands!
Here when we think so many times to even do a simple x ray!
Of course the aftermath was not kind!
Decades later, medical studies revealed that a larger thymus in a well-nourished baby is completely normal and does not cause SIDS!
More importantly, the high-dose radiation used to shrink the thymus exposed the highly sensitive thyroid gland and nearby tissues.
As those children grew up, this historical practice led to significantly increased rates of thyroid cancer, breast cancer, and other late complications!
To add insult to the injury, the SUPPOSED shrinkage of THYMUS had no bearing on the rates of SIDS…
In an attempt to find a SOLUTION to a problem; sometimes you end up creating a BIGGER PROBLEM!
Which is why in the quest of solution you must first think! And may be listen to common sense or some great song! Maybe by Pankaj Udhas!
Now sleep without any stress on your crib…I mean bed!
Subh ratri…
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