SHOULD WE 'EXPERIMENT' ON CHILDREN?
Summary
Children are generally treated with smaller doses of medicines which have been tested on adults, yet children can react differently to such medicines. As new and more effective medicines continue to be developed, how can we find an ethical and safe way of testing their effectiveness on children? Prof Alan Craft examines this area and provides a commentary on a recent US attempt to achieve this.
Key Points
- Medicine aims increasingly to practice on the basis of evidence of efficacy (‘evidence-based medicine’).
- Children do not react identically to adults, and consequently medical practice in children needs to be based on evidence derived from children.
- Experimentation in children raises serious and particular ethical difficulties, especially in relation to competence and consent.
- Particular problems relate to the involvement in research of healthy children who cannot themselves receive any benefit from that research.
- The recent referral by the FDA in the US of proposed research on the effect of dextroamphetamine in ADHD to a special committee may demonstrate how research on children might be facilitated.
Declaration of interests: No conflict of interests declared
