Tag Archives: Ethics

Time to stop placebo injections in neonatal research projects

Randomized controlled trials are the bedrock of evidence-based medicine. If a treatment has a good theoretical rationale, and preclinical data showing efficacy, the only way to prove efficacy in the human is to randomise patients to the treatment, compared to … Continue reading

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More randomized trials of magic in newborn infants

The scientific basis of neonatology is vitally important to me, the enormous advances that we have made have all been founded on basic and clinical science. So I can get quite agitated when I see articles reporting trials of interventions … Continue reading

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Does knowing the genetic abnormality change management? And should it?

Just after I pressed “post” for a recent addition to the blog, I saw this appear. (Callahan KP, et al. Influence of Genetic Information on Neonatologists’ Decisions: A Psychological Experiment. Pediatrics. 2022;149). It illustrates some major problems in how neonatologists … Continue reading

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Should every baby have their Genome sequenced?

Annie Janvier, John Lantos and I have just published an article about Next Generation Sequencing (Janvier A, et al. Next generation sequencing in neonatology: what does it mean for the next generation? Hum Genet. 2022), which is a common way … Continue reading

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What do we tell families at 22 weeks?

When we counsel families about the potential outcomes for infants born profoundly preterm, I think we would all agree that we should be honest, transparent and truthful. Which includes, I would suggest, truthfulness about our own local results, as well … Continue reading

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Active intensive care at 22 weeks gestation

Even the New England Journal are getting in on the act (Lee CD, et al. Neonatal Resuscitation in 22-Week Pregnancies. N Engl J Med. 2022;386(4):391-3), I guess that someone talked to the editors about the practice variation in resuscitation of … Continue reading

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Survival and outcomes for the extremely preterm. The NICHD network results continue to improve: Can we do even better?

A new publication from the NRN describes short term outcomes and care practices of babies from 22 to 28 weeks gestation born in recent years (2013 to 2018) and for those born in 2013-2016 results of evaluations of those followed … Continue reading

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Ethically acceptable pain research

Just imagine for a moment that you are the parent of Jo, who is 4 years old, Jo has a sudden onset of breathlessness and the investigations in the Emergency Room show a spontaneous pneumothorax, that needs a drain. You … Continue reading

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Unethical pain research in the newborn. A list of shame.

Unethical pain studies are still being published, in journals which include several from mainstream publishing houses. In these studies published recently and appearing on-line in recent weeks, newborn infants were assigned by the researchers to experience pain. The reviewers of … Continue reading

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How do we make decisions for the most immature babies, with their families?

Although babies under 25 weeks account for a tiny proportion of births, and a small proportion of NICU admissions, the importance of the question asked in the title can be seen by the ongoing number of publications, below are just … Continue reading

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