How many babies are switched at birth a year?

Answer 1

Because of the many cases of babies "switched at birth" that have come to light there is reason to believe that most of these cases are never found. Some of the circumstances that have brought out these cases resolve around the coincidence of many uncontrolled factors. Switched babies have met and discussed their backrounds only to discover many similarities such as a common hospital of birth, common feelings of feeling misplaced or an outsider in their families, and bodily features that they couldn't account for. Looking at pictures of each others families they find that each resembles the others family more than their own. Such has been the method by which some of these "switched baby" cases have been discovered. Genetic testing was sometimes used to confirm the situation. With no genetic testing available to support their speculation, there must have been many cases of "switched babies" in the past with no way to get a solid confirmation. With so many variables the estimation of the total number of such cases is difficult. We can surmise that the incidence would be highest where the opportunity for switching would be highest, such as in hospital births where babies are separated from their mother for short periods for testing, treatment, or other things. Societies that support home births would have a low incidence because the opportunity for switching is negligible. The large number of births in hospitals gives a likelihood of many switched births over millions (?billions) of individual births. In homogenious population areas the likelihood is greatest and most of these switches are likely never recognized or even suspected. Since earth's population of humans is over 6 billion, and an incidence of one in 60,000 seems within reason, that means there could reasonably be 600,000 switched at birth people among the earth's population at this time. This is certainly a significant number of people and even if we change the result downward by an order of magnitude we are still left with a lot of people. mikethephilosopher

Answer 2

in 1990 to 2008 it only been eight times