(The Guardian) – Doctors are pushing the limits of science and human biology to save more extremely premature babies than ever before. But when so few survive, are we putting them through needless suffering?

When babies are born on the edge of viability, between 22 and 24 weeks, their prognosis is often so poor that parents and doctors must decide together what is in the baby’s best interests. Do they deem the chance of survival so low that it is better to offer “comfort-focused care”: to do nothing that might cause the baby pain, and let them die peacefully in their parents’ arms? Or is the right approach to pursue “survival-focused care”: to resuscitate them and admit them to the Nicu, where they will undergo many painful and invasive treatments, in the hope that they will defy the odds and live? Doctors call this period at the limits of viability, when the ethics of whether to resuscitate babies is deemed so uncertain that it is seen as a matter of parental choice, the “grey zone”. (Read More)