Iowa legislators are considering a bill that would require medical examiners to document recent immunizations on the death certificates of children who died from unknown causes, KIMT3 News reported.
Bill sponsor Rep. Samantha Fett of Warren County said this information is important to understand what might be behind deaths categorized as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
“The U.S. continues to have a high SIDS rate compared to every other industrialized nation,” Fett told The Defender. “I believe it is time to start gathering this information for the parents of the children who have died.”
Fett said health departments also should have this information so health officials and medical examiners can ensure that every medication a child takes is taken into consideration when trying to determine why a child died.
Medical researcher Neil Z. Miller, author of numerous books on vaccine safety, told The Defender that “of course” the bill is a good idea.
“A child never dies from ‘unknown causes,’” Miller said. “There is always a reason for death. Often, that reason is vaccines. But medical examiners may be ‘hesitant’ to list vaccines as the probable cause due to intense pressure from medical colleagues.”
The proposed bill would relieve that pressure.
Critics of the bill say the medical review conducted when a child dies is already extensive. A local physician, Dr. Austin Baeth of Polk County, Iowa, said that even considering the bill “gives the signal to Iowans out there that vaccines are dangerous.”
Miller disagreed. “No, the actual harm may be yet another child’s death labeled as being from unknown causes, which can serve as a euphemism for a vaccine-related death.”
A Wright County medical examiner told KIMT3 that there are approximately 30 child deaths per year in Iowa that are attributed to unknown circumstances.
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