A recent program appeared on national television addressing ethical decision making in newborn intensive care, entitled "Technology Rocks the Cradle." This title is a classic double entendre; the literal meaning being that modern newborn care, especially newborn intensive care, has been greatly influenced in a benign fashion by the high technology that has been developed around it; the second interpretation implying that, like a boat, the cradle with baby on board is being dangerously rocked by this same high technology to the point of destabilization and threatened disaster.
Intensive care, and especially newborn intensive care, developed in the early 1960s only because certain important technological advances made possible the miniaturization of ways to evaluate and treat very small subjects. Such equipment as infant respirators, micro blood gas analyzers, and even basics like small-bore endotracheal tubes or plastic umbilical catheters were unavailable prior to this revolution in care, which showed almost