London

The British government is set to review the cases of 258 British parents convicted of murdering their own babies in the past decade, after the Court of Appeal threw out the expert testimony used in three such convictions.

A row has erupted over testimony given by retired paediatrician Roy Meadow. In 1977, Meadow, then at St James's University Hospital in Leeds, proposed the condition ‘Munchausen syndrome by proxy’ (R. Meadow Lancet ii, 343–345; 1977), which describes parents who deliberately harm their children to draw attention to themselves. In many court cases he testified on the probability that this syndrome was responsible for sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS.

Meadow has been pilloried in the British press for his role as expert witness in the three convictions, and is under investigation by the General Medical Council, which governs British medicine. He is due to appear before its professional conduct committee this summer.

Lawyers representing Meadow have advised him not to comment on the charges, he says. But some scientists have privately sprung to his defence. One senior paediatrician contacted by Nature said that Meadow “has made important contributions” to the understanding of cot deaths and had conducted himself with “skill and compassion”.

Others feel that Meadow has allowed his judgement to be clouded. “Meadow has gone over the top,” says Robert Carpenter, who researches SIDS at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “He sees child abuse behind every tree.”

Joyce Epstein, director of the London-based charity, the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths, called for more thorough investigation into each death. “There should also be an examination of 40 different tissues, including the whole brain,” says Carpenter.

Peter Fleming, a child-health expert at the University of Bristol, will publish an article next month in the British Medical Journal calling for such detailed investigations to be performed within 24 hours of the baby's death. But doctors are reluctant to enter the ethical and legal minefield of such investigations, making a uniform regime tough to implement.