Tag Archives: Ethics

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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How often does Whole Genome Sequencing really help the baby? Or their family?

It is a long time since I have written anything on this blog about the above issue, I have an article in submission to the real scientific literature with some illustrious co-authors, but I was prompted to write this blog … Continue reading

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Pain studies with untreated control groups in babies are unethical.

If you are performing a study of pain control in the newborn and you assign babies to untreated controls, you are creating unnecessary avoidable pain in the control patients. That is true for any patient who is incompetent, obviously including … Continue reading

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Two amazing trials, at the opposite ends of the spectrum. What a weird world.

In the most recent NEJM two trials impacting newborn/paediatric care. One including 3,211 preterm infants, which shows that a very simple intervention could save, I estimate, tens of thousands of lives each year at almost no cost; the other with … Continue reading

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Do estimates of survival change decisions made?

Kidszun A, et al. Effect of Neonatal Outcome Estimates on Decision-Making Preferences of Mothers Facing Preterm Birth: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Pediatr. 2020. This is a short report of an interesting idea, published as a research letter. The authors … Continue reading

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Giving bad news as it happens

A new publication from my great group at Sainte Justine. Lizotte MH, et al. Techniques to Communicate Better With Parents During End-of-Life Scenarios in Neonatology. Pediatrics. 2020:e20191925. We have already published about what residents think about being part of a … Continue reading

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Gene therapy for SMA; who will win the lottery?

There are few things more disgusting than the obscene actions of drug companies that profit off the distress of dying babies and their families. You might think that the price of a drug would be based on development and production … Continue reading

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Therapeutic Hypothermia post cardiac arrest

This is a bit off-topic for this blog, but many of you will know that cooling is now used for many other patients than just our full-term asphyxias. Adults who remain with depressed levels of consciousness after resuscitation from a … Continue reading

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