Sir, - The term Sudden Infant Death Syndrome [SIDS] was established in 1969 to acknowledge the fact that well infants were being found dead with no obvious medical cause of death after a thorough history and post-mortem examination. The term SIDS is not an explanation for these deaths but an acceptance that well, apparently healthy (little) people are regularly found inexplicably dead, especially in the first six months of life.Blaming parental stupidity or incompetence for these deaths has a a long history going back to the "Judgement of Solomon" in the Old Testament, where a woman "overlaid her infant in the night", with the mother (never the father) blamed and a variety of sanctions imposed from stoning to compulsory hugging of the dead baby for three days and nights to show proper remorse, to ostracism, as in W. B. Yeats's The Ballad of Moll Magee.We know that parental competence is a significant factor in infant health and occasionally in an infant's death, and, yes, a deathscene investigation may provide a useful information to help us understand how differing combinations of home circumstances can lethally interfere with an infant's controlling systems. What this issue underlines, however, is the difficulty (smart) doctors may have in saying: "we just don't know why a baby died." It's unfortunately much easier to blame stupid parents. - Yours, etc.,Professor Tom Matthews,The Children's Hospital,Temple Street,and The Rotunda Hospital,Dublin 1.