intensive care unit and stressed the need for doctors to listen to parents, to work to understand their views and to retain the trust of parents. Wilkinson stressed the continual worry that practitioners in his field had about the balance between the pain of treatment against its possible or potential benefits. He stressed that ventilation and suction were painful intrusive procedures. The majority of these opinions were promulgated before the second evidential hearing in the High Court or before the full judgement was published. Beneficence and non-maleficence Savulescu's view that the parents' disagreement with the doctors was reasonable was based in part on the argument that the prospect of benefit offered by the proposed experimental treatment, albeit small, offered more than death. In his opinion, the benefits outweighed any harm – modern medicine is such that the pain and suffering caused by the artificial ventilation and suction would be ameliorated. Professor Savulescu's views in this regard were in accord with Professor Gillon's. Both Savulescu and Wilkinson had earlier argued against the notion of a 'best interest' argument to support the withdrawal of artificial life support. "Dominic Wilkinson and I have argued that although futility is often said to refer to 'best interests', it is more appropriately interpreted as a justice justification for limitation, that is, (the probability of the treatment prolonging life, or the quality of life, or the length of time the patient can survive are too low to justify the cost of the attempt (distributive justice)). ... The reason we have argued this is that the best interests justification [that continued life is no longer in the patient's interests] requires that doctors establish that life is no longer worth living. That is, that the person would be better off dead." Wilkinson argues that the 'vanishingly small' possibility of benefit from the experimental treatment must be weighed against the "significant negatives in the balance. Those negatives can arise from the child's illness, or from the medical treatment. ... Being kept alive in intensive care is not pleasant. Although we do our best to provide pain relief, sedation, care and comfort to gravely ill children and babies, that ability is finite and imperfect. Children on long-term ventilation often appear uncomfortable at least part of the time. They have frequent needles and invasive procedures. They may be distressed and unable to communicate the source of their distress. ... Sadly, reluctantly, doctors