John Lorber (1915–1996) was a professor of

paediatrics Pediatrics ( also spelled ''paediatrics'' or ''pædiatrics'') is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until the ...

at the

University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...

from 1979 until his retirement in 1981. He worked at the Children's Hospital of Sheffield, where he specialized in work on

spina bifida Spina bifida (Latin for 'split spine'; SB) is a birth defect in which there is incomplete closing of the spine and the membranes around the spinal cord during early development in pregnancy. There are three main types: spina bifida occulta, me ...

. He also wrote on the subject of

medical ethics Medical ethics is an applied branch of ethics which analyzes the practice of clinical medicine and related scientific research. Medical ethics is based on a set of values that professionals can refer to in the case of any confusion or conflict. T ...

regarding the use of intensive medical intervention for severely handicapped infants.

Medical ethics and neonatal surgical intervention

In the 1970s, Lorber was one of the early advocates for

neonatal An infant or baby is the very young offspring of human beings. ''Infant'' (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'unable to speak' or 'speechless') is a formal or specialised synonym for the common term ''baby''. The terms may also be used to ...

surgical intervention in cases of the Myelomeningocele form of

. Lorber's published work advocating treatments, along with the opposing views of Raymond Duff and A. G. M. Campbell, became important voices in the debate about the ethics of withholding medical care. However, by the mid 1980s, Lorber's position had changed based on the unsatisfactory long term outcomes and instead he supported a treatment of normal nursing, with care to avoid pain and discomfort. This position was criticized by pro-life groups.

''Is Your Brain Really Necessary?''

In 1980,

Roger Lewin Roger Lewin (born 1944) is a British prize-winning science writer and author of 20 books. Career Lewin was a staff member of ''New Scientist'' in London for nine years. He went to Washington, D.C. to write for ''Science (journal), Science'' fo ...

published an article in

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

, "Is Your Brain Really Necessary?", about Lorber studies on cerebral cortex losses. He included a report by Lorber, never published in any scientific journal, about the case of a Sheffield University student who had a measured IQ of 126 and passed a Mathematics Degree but who had hardly any discernible brain matter at all since his cortex was extremely reduced by

hydrocephalus Hydrocephalus is a condition in which an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) occurs within the brain. This typically causes increased intracranial pressure, pressure inside the skull. Older people may have headaches, double vision, poor ...

. The article led to the broadcast of a Yorkshire Television documentary of the same title, though it was about a different patient who had normal brain mass distributed strangely in a very large skull. Explanations have been proposed for the first student's situation, with reviewers noting that Lorber's scans evidenced that the subject's brain mass was not absent, but compacted into the small space available, possibly compressed to a greater density than regular brain tissue.Guide on Mild Spina Bifida Occulta S1
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lorber, John Lorber John 1996 deaths 1915 births