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In England the Cook Report is similar in many ways
to the highly acclaimed "60 Minutes" "Dateline"
or "20/20" in the United States. Roger Cook, the program
anchor, can be compared with Mike Wallace, because each man is an
honest hard-hitting investigative journalist. Roger Cook presented
two medical documentaries titled "Cot Death Poisonings Parts
1 and 2" in late November 1994 on British television. Each
segment investigated Mr. Barry Richardson's "accidental gas
poisoning explanation" for these deaths. In 1989, Mr.
Richardson had concluded, based upon his experiments using
mattresses upon which a baby had died that the presence of a common
mold could result in the generation of poisonous gases from
mattresses made from PVC containing certain chemical compounds.
The first Cook Report
segment began with Anne Diamond, who might be considered to be the
equivalent of Barbara Walters in America. Anne Diamond was unique,
because her infant son, Sebastian, had been a victim of SIDS. Prior
to airing this segment, a sample of Sebastian's liver tissue, which
had been saved, was analyzed for the element antimony.
Antimony is an extremely rare element but is frequently found in
crib mattress polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The Cook Report had focused
on the presence of antimony in tissue samples from previous SIDS
deaths as an indication that these babies had been exposed to a
source of the gas of antimony.
Sebastian's liver tissue contained antimony at a
level far greater than predicted suggesting that he had been
accidentally poisoned . Anne Diamond, after being informed of the
results, was interviewed and tearfully agreed that a cause and
effect relationship may have existed. She expressed her anger at her
government for not providing a warning. In all, over 50% of the
tissue samples from SIDS babies had extraordinarily high levels of
antimony, while none of the babies who had died of other causes had
elevated levels. A subsequent Cook Report segment
focused upon how parents could properly cover crib mattresses
with a sheet of polyethylene. Richardson explained that a
thick polyethylene cover would prevent gases, if any formed within a
mattress, from reaching a baby.
A subsequent segment
focused upon antimony levels in apparently healthy children. Samples
of hair that were analyzed showed toddlers had antimony levels far
higher than their mother's levels in many cases. This suggested that
not all antimony poisonings resulted in death, but raised new
questions concerning chronic exposure to antimony. This report
concluded that the only likely source of antimony in a baby's
environment was the crib mattress.
Although British television has carried this story
it has not been aired in the United States. Evidence exists that Ed
Bradley from "60 Minutes" has done this story, but it has
not been shown for unexplained reasons.
It deserves mentioning that mattress manufacturers in
England began to voluntarily withdraw arsenic and antimony from
their mattresses in late 1991.
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