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Review of Legal Instruments and Codes on Medical Experimentation with Children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Sujit Choudhry
Sujit Choudhry
Affiliation:
Associate Member of the Centre for Bioethics, University of Toronto, where he is also a student in the Faculty of Law.
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Extract

Medical research with children has been the subject of ongoing debate. The reason for controversy is clear. As with research on adults, one must strike a balance between two goals – promoting the health of children through advances in scientific knowledge and protecting child research subjects from exploitation and harm. However, because of their age and relative immaturity, children cannot protect their own interests as well as adult subjects can. Yet as they progress toward adulthood, increasing care must be taken to involve children in decisions that affect them, even to the extent of allowing them to make choices that may have serious and long-term consequences.

Type
Special Section: Research Ethics: Ethics at the Borders of Medical Research
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , Fall 1994 , pp. 560 - 573
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

Notes

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2. This study is based on source materials available in the Health Legislation Unit, WHO. Although codes and laws from a variety of jurisdictions and national organizations and those promulgated by many international bodies have been examined, this paper does not purport to be a comprehensive review of all laws and codes governing medical experimentation with children.

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