Comments on: Reporting the Story

By: Alan Gurbutt

Alan Gurbutt — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:22:44 +0000

From personal experience: I consider my pre-term daughter an individual, an intelligent girl who has done her very best to improve her own outcome. Journalistic reports quoting premature children have lower IQs or are less intelligent can be quite damaging, and often fail to take into account the individual’s development.

Educationalists rely on research that is credible and based on relevant cohorts of children. The consequences of false and hyped stories can be very damaging depending on who takes them seriously.

The term “catch-up” was put to us at our daughter’s last paediatric review in 1999, we hadn’t much choice other than to accept this quasi-explanation, until a later educational assessment highlighted her short-term memory problem. Had we the foresight to explore techniques that could have improved her outcome sooner, progression would have been so much easier.

If there weren’t so many “half baked” ideas and theories banded about, parents and teachers would have a clearer understanding of the individual’s requirements.

Time and money is currently being invested into Neurodevelopmental impairment of infants born pre-term using DTI and MRI imaging, lets wait to see the outcomes before any more miracles and quick fix solutions! Alan.

By: Amy Martiner

Amy Martiner — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:58:19 +0000

Thanks Ruth!

As someone that knows the realities of having a micro-preemie baby myself, I find it very frustrating to see media coverage that depicts this kind of medical crises in such glowing, miracles-happen-every-day language. I’m extremely grateful for my daughter’s survival and dispite some severe developmental disabilities, she’s doing very well. I now work in a NICU and see the disservice this kind of reporting has on real-life families making very difficult choices about what they will put their child through in a fight to survive.

Keep on working to educate the media about the unintended consequences of this reporting!

By: Sarah Manns

Sarah Manns — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 19:54:40 +0000

Ruth,part of the discussion about babies born prematurely,very prematurely and even those born on the edge of viability is that they catch-up.I am sure we have all heard it said “Oh,they get there in the end?” Says who?And where is “There”? And what if they do not? Does this make these children any less? This catch-up message forms part of the discussion that the media fosters when discussing babies born prematurely, leading to a belief held by the public that regardless of gestation,these babies develop as if they were born full term.
This belief in catch-up fosters false hopes where parents see their children not as they are, but what they might be when they catch-up, a gaze mediated through the promise of something to come, regarding their children as other.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:33:10 +0000

Thanks for this article. I have not seen any follow-up on baby Amelia, the miracle baby born in Florida in 2006? How is she?

By: Christine Gorman

Christine Gorman — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 20:07:04 +0000

Couldn’t agree with you more. As a science journalist at TIME for more than 20 years, I often found that the biggest part of my job was to quash stories about alleged “breakthroughs” or “miracles” and keep them out of the magazine (or at least adopt a properly skeptical tone)!

By: Dora

Dora — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:08:21 +0000

Thank you for the explanation on the scienitific use of the words “theory” and “hypothesis”, and that technological advances always stem from basic sciences. In addition to being objective, journalists have an obligation to educate and inform the public. Perhaps journalists could spend more time researching a topic and not just go with a press release. Readers do discern and value quality rather than sensationalism and what better teaching moment can one that is linked with a human interest story.

By: Stacey

Stacey — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 05:26:39 +0000

Thank you for this! You’ve hit the nail on the head when it comes to the media coverage of miracle babies. I wish more people understood that life with a preemie…even one born not-so-close to the limits of viability…can be a very tough road. Instead, most people think all our children are completely normal by the time they turn two. I hope some of our science journalists out there will read this article and construct some compelling arguments for their editors about showing the reality behind medicine instead of sensationalism.