| Claims | Vaccines are claimed to causesudden infant death syndrome |
|---|---|
| Year proposed | 1991 |
| Original proponents | Attributed toRobert Mendelsohn |
| Subsequent proponents | Viera Scheibner,Kelly Brogan |
| (Overview of pseudoscientific concepts) | |
A speculated link betweenvaccines andSIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) has been refuted,[1] but remains a commonanti-vaccine claim.[2] The claim, attributed toRobert Mendelsohn in 1991[3][non-primary source needed] and promoted by anti-vaccination activists such asViera Scheibner in the early 1990s, is thatvaccines, especially theDTP vaccine that protects againstdiphtheria,tetanus andpertussis, sometimes causessudden infant death syndrome. TheWorld Health Organization has classified this as a "common misconception".[4]
Some also claim that avaccine court case,Boatmon v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, 13-611 (Fed. Cl. 2017), proves this link. While compensation was awarded to Boatmon, this did not prove any link,[5] and the award was in any case vacated in July 2018 as the Special master had applied too low a standard of proof.[6]
Multiple studies andmeta-analyses have shown that vaccinated children are less likely to die of SIDS.[7]
Vaccines have not been shown to cause sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).