Context
Mount Sinai Hospital Toronto is one of North America’s flagship neonatal programmes. Three of its past and present senior neonatologists sit on the Shoo Lee International Expert Panel: Dr Shoo Lee himself (former paediatrician-in-chief), Prof. Prakesh Shah (his successor in that role), and Prof. Douglas Campbell. The institutional coherence of the Panel’s finding is visible in this triple-signature from a single flagship programme.
Why institutional coherence matters
A finding signed by one senior clinician, however distinguished, could be described as an individual judgement. A finding signed by the former paediatrician-in-chief, the current paediatrician-in-chief, and another senior Associate Professor from the same institution is structurally different. It represents an institutional position of a major neonatal programme.
The Mount Sinai Toronto position on the Letby medical evidence is not that one senior clinician happens to disagree with the Crown’s experts. It is that the continuing institutional reading of one of North America’s leading neonatal programmes is that the medical evidence of deliberate harm is not present in the Letby casebook.
The University of Toronto context
The University of Toronto Department of Paediatrics is one of the largest and most research-active paediatrics departments in North America. Its neonatology division produces substantial peer-reviewed research and operates the Canadian Neonatal Network outcomes registry (under Prof. Shah’s leadership). The UofT institutional frame on neonatal clinical reasoning is therefore a well-developed one.
What the Toronto signatories add
- Dr Shoo Lee: author of the 1989 air-embolism paper cited by the Crown; Panel chair; public-facing voice of the Panel’s position.
- Prof. Prakesh Shah: paediatrician-in-chief; director of the Canadian Neonatal Network; population-outcomes calibration.
- Prof. Douglas Campbell: Associate Professor at the University of Toronto; additional clinical-neonatology perspective.
Read alongside
Dr Shoo Lee — biography, Prof. Prakesh Shah — biography, Panel members — full list, Panel press conference (Feb 2025).