Why he matters in this case
Prof. Darlow is one of the senior international neonatologists who signed the Shoo Lee Panel’s February 2025 report. His professional background is specifically relevant: he founded the Australia and New Zealand Neonatal Network, one of the longest-running international neonatal outcomes registries. His professional career has been about understanding what happens in neonatal units at a population level, which is exactly the analytic frame the Letby case needed and did not receive at trial.
Professional background
- Emeritus Professor of Paediatrics, University of Otago, New Zealand.
- Founder of the Australia and New Zealand Neonatal Network (ANZNN) — the longitudinal outcomes registry for extremely preterm infants across two countries.
- Decades of peer-reviewed publication on neonatal outcomes, particularly in extremely preterm and very-low-birth-weight infants.
- Distinguished international standing as a neonatal population-outcomes researcher.
What his contribution adds
Prof. Darlow’s particular value on the Panel is his population-outcomes frame. When a Level 2 NICU admits babies at the edge of viability — 23 to 25 weeks’ gestation — that unit is, by ANZNN-registry evidence and by equivalent UK data, looking at baseline mortality rates that are simply high. A cluster of deaths on such a unit, especially one with the documented staffing and infrastructure problems of the Countess of Chester in 2015–16, is not per se a criminal signal. It is a signal that a unit is operating outside its design envelope.
His specific published work on outcomes for 23-week and 24-week infants, and on the population-level distribution of collapses and deaths on neonatal units, directly challenges the prosecution’s framing that a cluster must necessarily indicate deliberate harm.