Published 28 September 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3984
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3984

News

Doctors explore research potential of blood samples from newborns

Bob Roehr

1 Washington, DC

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Heightened concerns about privacy and a growing potential for research have led to a re-examination in the United States of policies on blood samples taken from newborn babies to screen for treatable genetic diseases.

At a recent forum on the subject, doctors said that more public education and awareness was needed. The American College of Medical Genetics and the Genetic Alliance sponsored the event just outside Washington, DC, on 23 September.

"Newborn screening is unique," said Alan Fleischman, medical director for the charity the March of Dimes, "because the specimens represent a sample of every baby born in the United States." That amounted to 4.2 million babies a year. "It is potentially a very valuable resource to improve the health of all children."

Traditionally in the US five blood spots are taken from a newborn infant, to assure an adequate sample in case of batch processing errors and for confirmatory . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ