Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Portable Brain Scanner to Save Premature Babies

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the monstir-in-my-pocket dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at UCL (University College London) are developing a portable brain scanner which could help save the lives of premature and newborn babies in intensive care by avoiding to move them to conventional scanning facilities. A current prototype combines the advantages of both magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound. It uses optical tomography to generate images showing how the brain is working and a new generation should be ready by 2008 and such scanners should be commercially available shortly after."

1 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sometimes I wonder... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    This is what I wonder too. Should we really be saving kids like this? If there is a genetic component to premature babies, and one woman has three premmies, then that's three more kids passing on the genes for premature babies.

    Soon, the premature baby genes spread throughout the population. If there is a form of dominance in the genetics for it then these kids are going to become a larger and larger component of the population.

    When do we stop and say no? when 10% of the population is giving birth to kids at 26 weeks. 20%? 40%? everybody?

    Sometimes I think it's better to let nature take it's course and stop breeding some really crap genetics INTO humankind.