Carlo Bellieni
Carlo V. Bellieni is an Italian neonatologist and a bioethicist. He served as Secretary of the Bioethics Committee of the Italian Pediatrics Society. He is a member of the ethical board of the Siena Biotech research facility and the Ethical Board of the Siena University Hospital where he directs the neonatal intensive therapy unit. He follows the empirical approach in bioethics, which emphasizes realism, reason, and empathy. Bellieni authored numerous clinical research papers in international scientific journals, and several books on neonatal pain and bioethics.
Studies on infant pain
Bellieni created and developed a new method of nonpharmacological analgesia called "sensorial saturation", based on the simultaneous administration of gentle stimuli to the baby during a painful procedure. This method is reported among the most effective for pain in babies. Bellieni also performed studies on babies' crying and developing a pain scale based on acoustical analysis of crying.Bellieni performed several analyses on babies' crying and showed that it is not useful to detect the cause that provoked it; nonetheless, it contain a sort of protolanguage, namely the patterns of crying change dramatically when it exceeds a certain pain threshold.