Babies died so companies could avoid bad press
In a healthier society – perhaps one less exhausted and consumed by the daily spigot of political headlines – a recent story revealing a hidden threat to our children would have been the most important news of the month.
At least 73 infant deaths were linked to a poorly designed product – infant inclined sleepers – and the deaths spanned the course of more than a decade. For years, the manufacturers knew the risks. Our government knew the risks. But infant inclined sleepers remained in stores and children’s bedrooms all the same.
As Consumer Reports discovered in the course of a yearlong investigation, a popular version of these products, the Fisher-price Rock ‘n Play Sleeper, was first conjured up by a product designer who had received unsound medical advice about propping up her baby’s head to help him sleep better.
Infants’ heads are disproportionately heavy as compared with the strength of their necks, however, and allowing them to sleep on an incline – such as the 30-degree incline of the Rock ‘n Play – can put babies in danger. This is because such an angle can cause infants’ heads to pitch forward and cut off airflow at the windpipe or make it easier for them to roll over from their backs to their stomachs, as demonstrated by a recent government study.
Incredibly, the designer, the Fisherprice hazard analysis team and parent company Mattel’s product safety division did not look into the potential risks of inclined sleepers before bringing them to the U.S. market in 2009. No pediatricians were consulted. No testing was performed on the angle of the product.
According to the testimony of Fisherprice employees, the 30-degree angle they arrived at was based on little more than guesswork.
It wasn’t long before the systems built to protect our children began to break down.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission, the federal agency responsible for policing dangerous products, proposed new standards in 2010 that would ultimately set a maximum incline of 10 degrees for bassinets, the product category that the Rock ‘n Play fell under. But instead of redesigning its product to meet the rules, Fisher-price asked the CPSC to create a new category – thereby exempting the Rock ‘n Play from a requirement that would ensure babies slept relatively flat. The agency agreed.
In 2011, Australian and Canadian regulators prohibited it from being marketed as a “sleeper.” The mother of one child whose death was associated with a Rock ‘n Play contacted the CPSC in 2012, and pediatricians began pleading with Fisher-price to pull their product as early as 2012 and 2013. Testimony revealed that the company knew of 14 babies whose deaths were linked to the Rock ‘n Play. All the while, the product was a hit – a No. 1 best-seller on Amazon with no shortage of accolades and imitators in the marketplace.
Remarkably, the only reason we know about the pattern of deaths is by accident – while conducting regular reviews of CPSC data last winter, Consumer Reports noticed that the agency had mistakenly failed to redact the names of products associated with recent incidents.
After informing them of what we saw, lawyers for the CPSC demanded that we return or destroy the data and remain silent about it. Instead, we published a story on April 8 based on the information – and four days later, Fisher-price announced a recall of 4.7 million Rock ‘n Play sleepers on the market.
Other companies followed with recalls of their infant inclined sleepers. To date, nearly 5.6 million inclined sleepers have been recalled because of the suffocation risk they pose to babies.
The obvious question – the moral test – is why did our government fail to protect babies at risk?
For starters, the CPSC was bound by a law that actually requires the government in most cases to seek permission from the manufacturer before releasing information about products – including issuing warnings about those products being associated with deaths! Imagine being a parent whose infant child’s death was linked to a Rock ‘n Play sleeper years after both the company and the government knew the risks.
A new bill introduced by Rep. Bobby Rush, D-ill., seeks to rewrite the law so that companies can no longer block the government’s ability to alert the public to safety threats. This would mark a critical step forward to the government rediscovering its essential role as a protector of our children – but it’s just the first step of many needed, including a full ban on inclined sleepers and other products that inherently conflict with pediatricians’ recommendations for a safe infant sleep environment.
As we continue through this new year, a year that will surely be dominated by political campaigns and global uncertainty, I hope that we can all take a moment to engage, however briefly, with the most basic reason why we’ve come together in the first place: to examine our society’s soul, to grade ourselves on the moral test, to ask ourselves what we should insist on from our government and our marketplace – that we might better protect our children in 2020 and beyond.
Marta Tellado is the president of Consumer Reports. Follow her on Twitter: @Mltellado.