Editorials and Opinion

Perhaps there is no crueler misfortune to befall a family than to have an otherwise healthy infant suddenly and mysteriously die in its sleep.

The finding couldn't be more starkly dramatic: "Hundreds of Americans kill their babies every year. Depending on where they live, they may well get away with it."

Scripps Howard News Service's study found that states like Arizona with aggressive, professional, standardized investigations find twice as many infant homicides as states with little or no such oversight.

Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York's Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history's most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps.