Editorial: The hopeful light of Scarlett’s Sunshine
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Scarlett Lillian Pauley should be building snowmen and chattering about the holidays. She should be struggling with pandemic homeschooling. She should be asking a million questions.
But in 2017, the Pittsburgh toddler died at just 16 months old. There was no obvious disease to blame or tragic accident to hold responsible. Scarlett was one of more than 80,000 who have been lost to what’s known as SUDC — sudden unexplained death in childhood — and SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome, the term for deaths that occur under the age of 1) over the last 25 years.
Now there is a way for Scarlett to have a legacy so much longer than her short life. She could be part of an effort to reduce those numbers — or at least offer a window of understanding.
“Losing a child is the single greatest pain we could ever imagine, and living without answers magnifies the tragedy exponentially,” parents Stephanie Zarecky and Ryan Pauley said in a press release from U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat. “We try every day to spread Scarlett’s Sunshine, allowing her memory to shine on and bring light to unexplained death in childhood, the medical mystery that took her from us.”
The Scarlett’s Sunshine on Sudden Unexpected Death Act is a bill Casey introduced. On Friday, it passed the Senate. It had already passed in the House of Representatives. Now it goes to President Trump to be signed into law.
This is an important action that provides for much-needed work in the field, which includes SIDS.
It puts dollars into better investigating pediatric death. It helps states look at every childhood death and evaluate ways to prevent them. It funds education, improves data collection and consistency and starts monitoring SUDC and reports on it to Congress.
In short, it addresses something that kills thousands of children the way something that kills thousands of children should be addressed: seriously.
“We must do more to understand why certain infants and young children have died unexpectedly, and to learn what is causing these deaths,” Casey said. “I introduced the Scarlett’s Sunshine on Sudden Unexpected Death Act to help increase our understanding of the causes of unexplained infant and child deaths and to help us develop new tools to prevent and reduce such deaths in the future.”
This is the kind of law that we need this year. Something human and humane, something that is both memorial and aspirational. Something that brought people together and can help people in pain find a way through it.
And all because of a little girl from Pittsburgh who is gone too soon.