This meant that newborns were often expected to undergo painful, invasive procedures, including
surgery, with no anesthesia or pain relief. It wasn't until
1987, following the publication of a landmark
paper (full text available here) by Dr. Kanwaljeet "Sunny" Anand and Dr. Paul Hickey in the
New England Journal of Medicine that the American Academy of Pediatrics made an official
statement of support for anesthesia in neonates undergoing surgery.
Despite
evidence of a physiological stress response to pain in human neonates, the underlying mechanism is
unclear, and the use of general anesthesia in the neonatal age cohort remains surprisingly
controversial.
It's wild to read older
papers discussing surgical techniques in neonates and come across a line like, "no anesthesia was used". It just seems so barbaric, certainly not one of our finest hours as a species.