The purposes of this research include, but are not limited to:

• Assisting parents of these children by providing "second" professional opinions and to assist in lessening their grief by enhancing accuracy of diagnosis. 
• Documenting the medical history, characteristics, and abnormal findings in this unique population of children.
• Publishing results of this analysis thereby adding to the limited medical literature currently available on this topic.
• Stimulating other researchers to investigate such cases.
• Providing a basis for legislation similar to existent SIDS statues (such as exists in California) that mandate standardized scene investigation and postmortem examination as well as authorizing utilization of records and specimens from these cases for research purposes.