Teaching Intubation Skills Using Newly Deceased Infants

To the Editor.  —We found the article by Benfield et al¹ very interesting.In 1989, we conducted a survey among the 10 largest Norwegian hospitals. We asked them if intubation techniques were taught using newly dead patients and whether this was done with consent from the families. None of the hospitals had established this as a routine, but two did it in selected cases, depending on the initiative of the attending anesthesiologists. Six of the hospitals used cadavers for other instructional purposes.² However, none of the hospitals, after a thorough analysis of the ethical questions involved,³ had decided that they would not routinely use newly dead patients for teaching intubation.It was therefore surprising when the Norwegian Medical Association's Ethics Committee, in June of this year, ruled that the use of newly dead patients for instruction of intubation techniques should be discouraged in Norway. This is in