Subsidiarity and SIDS

Yesterday the American Academy of Pediatrics issued new guidelines designed to cut the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome:

To minimize the risk of crib death, the nation's largest organization of pediatricians is recommending that babies be put to sleep with pacifiers and in their own beds, despite intense opposition from advocates of breast-feeding and the "family bed."

The American Academy of Pediatrics, hoping to settle some of the most hotly debated and emotional issues related to the care of newborns, is for the first time endorsing routine pacifier use and explicitly advocating a ban on babies sleeping with their parents.

As a parent of three daughters who have slept in our bed as babies and were never fond of pacifiers, I approach these new guidelines with a certain degree of skepticism.  But as someone interested in Catholic legal theory, I'm wondering how these guidelines comport with subsidiarity.  Assuming that the AAP is not really going to try and criminalize parent and baby co-sleeping, does advocacy by a non-state organization with this much influence still qualify as a higher body taking decision-making authority from the lower body?  Critics of the new policy claim that:

The evidence that pacifiers are helpful and bed sharing is dangerous is far from conclusive . . .adding that the recommendations will hinder breast-feeding and mother-child bonding, which are clearly beneficial.

"I'm very disappointed," said James J. McKenna, director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. "I really fear this is just another step of inappropriately medicalizing decisions that are best made within the home."

So I guess my subsidiarity-driven skepticism is twofold.  First, even though the AAP policy does not amount to legal coercion, the group's stature and the bright-line confidence with which they paint the issue as a non-negotiable element of baby safety may effectively negate the decision-making authority of many parents.  Second, while 2000 SIDS deaths a year are a tragedy, I'm not sure the possibility of harm warrants the absolute condemnation of co-sleeping and nursing at bedtime, both of which function as fundamental building blocks of many parent-child relationships.  That said, would my opinion change if 10,000 babies died each year from SIDS and the deaths were directly linked to co-sleeping?  50,000 deaths?  At what point does the harm warrant AAP's condemnation?  At what point would it warrant state intervention?

I don't have easy answers to these questions, but I do know that when groups like AAP pronounce a one-size-fits-all approach to intimate family practices, it's not just a matter of public health; it's also a question of subsidiarity.

Rob