Good morning! We are sending this message out to all our family, friends, everyone in our address book, and to people we think would be interested in our project. Please let us know if you wish to be removed from future email updates, or if you received a duplicate message, and we apologize for the inconvenience. If you are unfamiliar with StopSIDS.org, here is the project in a nutshell. For years Tracey (my wife) and I have wanted to do research on the link between the spine and infant health, specifically Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). >From the time we worked as research assistance in Chiropractic College, we have been convinced that SIDS can be reduced if infants have a properly functioning spine and nerve system. Over the past twelve years we have collected over 100 medical research papers that point to the brain stem as the area that typically malfunctions and causes SIDS. Many of these papers came out of Harvard, UCLA and other top pediatric research facilities. One thing they (the MD's) recognize is that they cannot screen for this defect in live infants or prevent it. We are doing research that we hope will lead to a screening and prevention procedure for SIDS. Our theory, "The Atlas VSC-SIDS Theory" suggests that if an infant has an atlas (the first bone in the neck) misaligned, this can cause brain stem malfunction and in rare cases, SIDS. One recent statistic that we believe supports our theory is the fact that since parents have been made aware that they should place infants to sleep on their back instead of their stomach, the incidence of SIDS has decreased by 40%. Our rationale for the reduction of SIDS deaths is; when an infant is sleeping on his or her stomach, they must turn the head and neck to one side to breath, which can add further insult and compromise to the spinal cord and brain stem if an atlas misalignment is present. BUT, if sleeping position was the only answer, then the percentage of SIDS deaths should have decreased by 70% since this is the estimated number of parents that are now placing their infant to sleep on their back instead of their stomach. A year and a half ago we decided to form a non-profit organization to perform research in this area. We named the organization StopSIDS.org, and have recently received the 501(C)(3) status (charitable, non-profit organization) from the IRS. We knew if we were going to get parents to bring their infants in to a chiropractic research project, we had to educate them on the important relationship between the spine and infant health. For that reason, we published our book titled, "The Best-Kept Secret to Raising a Healthy Child...and the Possible Prevention of SIDS". We have a PDF of an EXCELLENT review that was written by the editor of a chiropractic peer reviewed journal. If you would like us to email it to you, please ask (with all the viruses going around this week, we didn't dare attach it). The review appeared in the June 15, 2001 issue of the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research. You can view the abstract of the review at http://www.jvsr.com/abstracts/4201- 0014_sids.htm So what have we done so far?... We have submitted 6 grant applications to different organizations, including the National Institute of Health (they are still reviewing our application). We have been denied by all but one organization to date, based primarily on the reviewers' myopic belief of chiropractic and its effect on improved health. The CJ Foundation for SIDS has given us a $5,000 grant to start our research project. The CJ Foundation is the organization that Don Imus is involved with, and we are grateful to them for their contribution and support of this project! Our first research project has received IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval from Sherman College of Chiropractic. In this project we are doing functional brain stem examinations with an instrument called the Brain Stem Auditory Evoked Response (BAER) instrument, before and after our treatment (atlas correction). We have tested one infant in the project to date and it did show a mild improvement after the atlas adjustment. We have another BAER test on a 3-month-old scheduled for this Monday, July 30th. To complete this project we need your help! Our most frustrating challenge is getting children for our project! We feel that if we get the book in the mainstream press, this will greatly help (all of the proceeds from the book sales are going to the project). We also need funds for running ads in newspapers and other publications to recruit volunteers for the research. There are many ways to help, from the very simple to the very involved. The simplest way you can help is to purchase a copy of our book for $14.95 (plus S&H). You can do that online at Amazon.com by clicking here http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0615114857/qid=993 727044/sr=1-2/ref=sc_b_2/104-4443361-5659165 You can also purchase the book on our website by clicking here http://www.stopsids.org/new.html You can also call us toll free to place your order at 1-888-521-9499. If you place your order directly with us, instead of Amazon.com, the organization makes more money since we don't have to give Amazon a cut.