Are America’s youngest and squishiest citizens getting away with the biggest fraud in history?

Controversy erupted at the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) over a story that was due to be published in the May issue and was pulled by the editor at the last minute.

The issue: babies and Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome.

Dr Alejandro Saavedra of Boston General submitted the paper to JAMA based on research he conducted over Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. For the uninitiated, the syndrome is characterized by overexaggeration of feigned symptons: in Dr Saavedra’s case, young mothers would bring in their children with symptoms like not being able to breathe, excessive flatulence, and possession by the devil.

Dr Saavedra, after a four month study of the mothers and the alleged symptoms came to the conclusion that it wasn’t the mothers causing the symptoms: it’s the babies.

“We’ve been duped for years,” Dr Saavedra stated in an email interview. “Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome has been seen as a mother’s sickness. But in my research, I’ve concluded that the true symptoms are the mother’s panic, and not the alleged wounds to the child.”

The cause? Babies.

“My research decisively concludes that it’s the babies who are actually behind this,” Dr Saavedra wrote. “The babies will pretend to stop breathing, or rig a device in their cribs to fake levitation and therefore, possession by Satan. All of this is designed to induce panic and fear in the mother, who will rush to the hospital like a nut. When we doctors examine the child, and find no problem, we immediately suspect Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. Nobody thought to question the baby.”

That finding prompted the paper to JAMA, which was accepted for publication but turned down at the last minute. Dr Saavedra complains: “Once again, the Western medical establishment has refused to accept what is plainly obvious, and prefers to stick to their closed-minded books. The proof is there! The babies have been faking symptoms to get the mothers to panic!”

Victor St James, acting editor of JAMA, was responsible for pulling the article. “I don’t know how this paper got this far along the pipeline,” he stated in a telephone interview. “Dr Saavedra has a fine reputation at Boston General, so I am very confused as to why he would try to pass this off as real science. The very notion that babies are responsible for causing their mothers to panic is absurd.” He added that he pulled the article more for Dr Saavedra’s reputation than for JAMA’s.

Some doctors, though, wishing not to be identified, privately voiced concerns that Dr Saavedra’s findings were not as far fetched as Mr St James portayed him. “I’ve seen so many cases like this over the years, that I easily dismissed it as classic cases of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome,” stated one doctor from Urbana, Illinois. “But secretly, I had my doubts. These women weren’t Spanish-speaking ignorants. They were bright, white, well-educated women with no psychological baggage. How could it be that they would be faking problems in their children just to get attention from doctors?”

One mother from Casa Grande, Arizona, concurred with that assessment. “I think doctors are egotistical assholes, and I hate my HMO,” she stated. “Why would I want to fake an injury to my baby just to go to the hospital?”

Yet what could account for babies causing their own symptoms? Dr Saavedra has no answers, insisting that the debate about Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome has to be re-evaluated from the core. “Let’s focus on what we’ve all been told since being snot-nosed, horny residents,” he stated. “Get the AMA, get the New England Journal of Medicine, get every medical association to listen to the thesis that babies are the real cause of the syndrome, not mothers. This is major medical fraud we are talking about. Something must be done.”

The babies of Dr Saavedra’s study refused to comment.