Newborns Should Require Informed Consent

Lucille Roybal-Allard quotes “Newborn screening is a public health intervention that involves a simple blood test used to identify many life-threatening genetic illnesses before any symptoms begin.” Informed consent is permission granted in the knowledge of the possible consequences, typically that which is given by a patient to a doctor for treatment with full knowledge of the possible risks and benefits. Informed consent is needed to protect both parties. The quandary that is faced is that albeit Newborn screening is preserving lives, is it right to go through the screening process without a parent’s consent. In order for this to happen, the medical provider must disclose information on the treatment, test, or procedure in question, including the expected benefits and risks, and the likelihood that the benefits and risks will occur. While taking a look at the effects of Krabbe disease screening one group of personnel believes that the screening process should require informed consent and on some levels it should not require informed consent. …show more content…
“The focus groups with pregnant women showed that most appreciated the benefits that the additional screening test could offer. Results from 198 parent interviews showed that 91% would participate again if they had the choice to make again regardless of whether their newborn had a negative or a false positive test result” (Feuchtbaum). Vigor is that when you let the parents know upfront what the test can do they are most appreciative. Parents incline to fortify what the screening process can do for the child, especially if it will benefit their children. When it is an incipient program that is geared towards getting more diseases screened by incipient technology that has come about, it is hard to get incipient hospitals, health care personnel and maternity clinics to sign up to do the studies to get parents