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Against Harmful Research on Non‐Agreeing Children
Author(s) -
Chwang Eric
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
bioethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.494
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1467-8519
pISSN - 0269-9702
DOI - 10.1111/bioe.12117
Subject(s) - ode , paternalism , permissive , argument (complex analysis) , psychology , parental consent , autonomy , pediatric research , power (physics) , epistemology , social psychology , informed consent , medicine , law , political science , pediatrics , mathematics , philosophy , alternative medicine , physics , pathology , virology , quantum mechanics
The C ode of F ederal R egulations permits harmful research on children who have not agreed to participate, but I will argue that it should be no more permissive of harmful research on such children than of harmful research on adults who have not agreed to participate. Of course, the C ode permits harmful research on adults. Such research is not morally problematic, however, because adults must agree to participate. And, of course, the C ode also permits beneficial research on children without needing their explicit agreement. This sort of research is also not problematic, this time because paternalism towards children may be justifiable. The moral problem at the center of this paper arises from the combination of two potential properties of pediatric research, first that it might be harmful and second that its subjects might not agree to participate. In S ection 2 of this article I explain how the C ode permits harmful research on non‐agreeing children. S ection 3 contains my argument that we should no more permit harmful research on non‐agreeing children than on non‐agreeing adults. In S ection 4, I argue that my thesis does not presuppose that pediatric assent has the same moral force that adult consent does. In S ection 5, I argue that the distinction between non‐voluntary and involuntary research is irrelevant to my thesis. In S ection 6, I rebut an objection based on the power of parental permission. In S ection 7 I suggest how the C ode of F ederal R egulations might be changed.

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