Blind science

Thanks to Brian Klepper for alerting me to this:

Here's a poignant personal story about modern medicine from my friend Michael Millenson. Michael is a journalist who has played a significant role in ushering in the quality and safety movements in American health care.

The lede:

When I was a newborn — a preemie struggling to survive in a hospital nursery’s incubator — an article deep inside The Washington Post saved me from becoming blind.

The article — on Page A22 — discussed research showing that too much oxygen in an incubator could cause babies to lose their sight. When my worried parents phoned the hospital, they were told doctors had also seen the piece and promptly adjusted the incubator’s air mixture. What none of them knew was that the sight in my right eye had already been destroyed by what is now called retinopathy of prematurity, or ROP. Fortunately, the vision in my left eye remained intact, saving me from a lifetime in the dark.

That was way back in 1953. Yet just a few months ago, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit involving premature babies enrolled in a study of what incubator oxygen level was best. The infants’ parents said they hadn’t been fully informed of all the risks to their infants. I was stunned. In 2015, how can the oxygen level in incubators still be endangering babies?

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