Author: Richard Firstman, Jamie Talan, Jamie Talan (Joint Author)

ISBN: 9780553379778

publisher: Random House Publishing Group

publisher Date: 01/28/1997

Price: 16

eBookPrice: 0

Description: Between 1965 and 1971, the five children of Waneta and Tim Hoyt died mysteriously, their deaths attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Nearly two decades later, a district attorney was alerted to a landmark 1972 paper in a prestigious medical journal. Written by a prominent medical researcher, the article described a family in which five children had died suddenly. The D.A. was convinced something about this account was very wrong. An intensive quest by a team of investigators came to a climax in the spring of 1995, in a dramatic trial in which Waneta Hoyt was convicted of the murder of all her children.This searing account is an astounding medical detective story, revealing the lasting effects of that 1972 article. It had legitimized the deaths of the last two Hoyt babies by theorizing a cause for the mystery of SIDS, suggesting it could be predicted and prevented, and saying that it runs in families. None of this has proved to be true. Just as important as the revelation of crimes concealed is the book's rigorous investigation of medical research gone awry: how scientists can be seduced into believing a hypothesis by the persuasive zeal of its proponent.