There has yet to be an investigation confirming that improved glutathione concentrations and in vivo glutathione synthetic rates occur in critically ill neonates supplemented with cysteine-HCl and that these perturbations lead to a decrease in the amount of oxidative tissue injury that these patients endure. This gap in studies serves as a perfect setting for our proposed randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled trial that is adequately powered to detect a pre-determined difference between the two groups.