This story made me a little uneasy. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but some of the quotations didn't appear quite right to me. Excerpt:

Tiny "miracle babies" make for heartwarming stories, but in reality nearly half of all infants born extremely premature have significant learning and physical disabilities by the time they reach school age, the largest such study found.

Medical advances have allowed doctors to save earlier and smaller babies. While some developmental problems are known to be common among such children, the long-term consequences were not entirely clear.

"We needed to have some idea of really what this group was like when they grew up," said one of the researchers, Dr. Neil Marlow, a neonatologist at the University of Nottingham in England.

Guidelines call for not resuscitating the most severely premature babies, but where to draw the line is a controversial and emotional decision. The study's findings may help guide doctors and parents about whether it is wise to use heroic measures.

"Parents need to go into this situation with their eyes wide open and with an open dialogue with their doctors as to what they should do," Marlow said.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 05:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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