Compassionate ethics for clinics

Biomedical ethicists and clinical practitioners both champion the good of the patient, but sometimes their approaches diverge. The harmony of the ideal and the real is our utmost goal, but we often confront situations where theory falls apart in practice. A neonatal study performed by several noted institutions that is being audited by the US Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) is a case in point. Prematurely born infants have underdeveloped lungs that need an intentional oxygen supply. However, too much oxygen carries other risks. Thus, to determine the optimal oxygen level within the range of levels allowed in the current clinical guidelines, researchers at 23 well-known academic institutions carried out a US government-financed study, thecent, showed a higher mortality rate than those in the higher oxygen concentration group, who received 91 to 95 percent. This result fundamentally changed the treatment guidelines for premature infants. The OHRP, however, has noted that the researchers did not properly notify the subjects that their babies could have faced differing risks of either death or developing serious ocu-lar problems according to the treatment protocol randomly assigned to them. While theego, has argued that at the time of the study design, there was no basis in the literature for attributing a greater risk of death to the lower oxygen level, the OHRP has identified pub