September 4, 2008

Law and medicine Prof. David Studdert of Melbourne University has called for an administered compensation scheme as less chancy and inefficient than malpractice lawsuits seeking to pin blame on obstetricians for the condition. "Some [doctors] see cerebral palsy litigation as a sign of how hopelessly out of touch the courts are with sound science.... Cerebral palsy cases stretch negligence law beyond its limits." Studdert's recent lecture was entitled "Bad babies: Law, Medicine and the battle over neurological birth injury" [University press release, Melbourne Age].