[Ethics and clinical practice guidelines: newborn hearing screening and early deaf childcare]

A national program for newborn hearing screening is gradually spreading throughout France, coming at a specific historical time: French sign language was recognized as a French language only in 2005, after almost a century of this language being banned in French educational institutions. Therefore, social views on deafness vary considerably depending on hearing status--deaf or hearing--and on the language used: spoken language, sign language, or bilingual. To help professionals take these different perspectives into account, the ethical questions raised during the French Authority for Health clinical practice guidelines development on deaf child care were retrospectively analyzed based on the Childress and Beauchamp principles: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. This analysis showed that the steps followed during the guideline development were very similar to those devised by J.M. Gomas's model for ethical decision making and were respectful of R. Ogien's minimal ethics principles: equal consideration for everyone, neutrality toward conceptions of what is good for oneself, and interventions limited to cases of obvious harm caused to others.