Three circumstances may (thinly) be argued to qualify the present writer as an "expert" commentator on the article by Kelly et al. in this issue of Pediatrics (p. 511): first (and nearly 20 years ago), that most humbling of all experiences for the pediatrician, the dismissal from one's office of an apparently healthy 2-month-old infant with a minor upper respiratory tract infection who is brought dead on arrival to one's own hospital not three hours later, the unavailability of any autopsy data (difficult to obtain from unsubsidized pathologists in small suburban hospitals ruled by the coroner system of forensic medicine) forcing the diagnosis of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) on bewildered parents and shaken physician; last, participation in a recent task force assembled by the American Academy of Pediatrics in an attempt to generate an omniscient statement to cover the optimal management of a dreaded condition ("near-miss SIDS") whose identification is by definition uncertain and concerning which a minimal base of factual knowledge is only now beginning to accrue.