Ethical and Legal Considerations in Withholding or Withdrawing Life Saving Treatment in Newborns

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26750360
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Childhood science (childhood environment science)
• Research Institution: National Center for Child Health and Development
• Principal Investigator: Onishi Kayo 国立研究開発法人国立成育医療研究センター, その他部局等, 研究員 (60727410)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 重症新生児 / ガイドライン / 22週出生児 / 新生児蘇生

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This project examined ethical and legal considerations in withholding or withdrawing life saving treatment in newborns as well as those with serious health problems.　Until quite recently,　more precisely around 1990, premature birth babies or those born with very serious health problems would have inescapably died. With the advance of neonatal medical technology,　however, contemporary neonatologists are now able to resuscitate babies born in earlier stages of gestation or those born with serious health problems. The irony that medicine's success, in this case the advance of neonatal medical technology, could produces medicine's ethical and legal problems as well. This project specifically focused on the ethical and legal considerations in withholding or withdrawing life saving treatment in newborns as well as those with serious health problems and examined its own problems, by comparing with cases in other advanced industrialized countries.

Free Research Field

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