Ethical Conduct Of Clinical Research Involving Children

In recent decades, advances in biomedical research have helped save or lengthen the lives of children around the world. With improved therapies, child and adolescent mortality rates have decreased significantly in the last half century. Despite these advances, pediatricians and others argue that children have not shared equally with adults in biomedical advances. Even though we want children to benefit from the dramatic and accelerating rate of progress in medical care that has been fueled by scientific research, we do not want to place children at risk of being harmed by participating in clinical studies. Ethical Conduct of Clinical Research Involving Children considers the necessities and challenges of this type of research and reviews the ethical and legal standards for conducting it. It also considers problems with the interpretation and application of these standards and conduct, concluding that while children should not be excluded from potentially beneficial clinical studies, some research that is ethically permissible for adults is not acceptable for children, who usually do not have the legal capacity or maturity to make informed decisions about research participation. The book looks at the need for appropriate pediatric expertise at all stages of the design, review, and conduct of a research project to effectively implement policies to protect children. It argues persuasively that a robust system for protecting human research participants in general is a necessary foundation for protecting child research participants in particular.

In recent decades, advances in biomedical research have helped save or lengthen the lives of children around the world. With improved therapies, child and adolescent mortality rates have decreased significantly in the last half century. Despite these advances, pediatricians and others argue that children have not shared equally with adults in biomedical advances. Even though we want children to benefit from the dramatic and accelerating rate of progress in medical care that has been fueled by scientific research, we do not want to place children at risk of being harmed by participating in clinical studies. Ethical Conduct of Clinical Research Involving Children considers the necessities and challenges of this type of research and reviews the ethical and legal standards for conducting it. It also considers problems with the interpretation and application of these standards and conduct, concluding that while children should not be excluded from potentially beneficial clinical studies, some research that is ethically permissible for adults is not acceptable for children, who usually do not have the legal capacity or maturity to make informed decisions about research participation. The book looks at the need for appropriate pediatric expertise at all stages of the design, review, and conduct of a research project to effectively implement policies to protect children. It argues persuasively that a robust system for protecting human research participants in general is a necessary foundation for protecting child research participants in particular.

The Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (BPCA) and the Pediatric Research Equity Act (PREA) were designed to encourage more pediatric studies of drugs used for children. The FDA asked the IOM to review aspects of pediatric studies and changes in product labeling that resulted from BPCA and PREA and their predecessor policies, as well as assess the incentives for pediatric studies of biologics and the extent to which biologics have been studied in children. The IOM committee concludes that these policies have helped provide clinicians who care for children with better information about the efficacy, safety, and appropriate prescribing of drugs. The IOM suggests that more can be done to increase knowledge about drugs used by children and thereby improve the clinical care, health, and well-being of the nation's children.

Ethical Considerations for Research on Housing-Related Health Hazards Involving Children explores the ethical issues posed when conducting research designed to identify, understand, or ameliorate housing-related health hazards among children. Such research involves children as subjects and is conducted in the home and in communities. It is often conducted with children in low-income families given the disproportionate prevalence of housing-related conditions such as lead poisoning, asthma, and fatal injuries among these children. This book emphasizes five key elements to address the particular ethical concerns raised by these characteristics: involving the affected community in the research and responding to their concerns; ensuring that parents understand the essential elements of the research; adopting uniform federal guidelines for such research by all sponsors (Subpart D of 45 CFR 46); providing guidance on key terms in the regulations; and viewing research oversight as a system with important roles for researchers, IRBs and their research institutions, sponsors and regulators of research, and the community.

"In the new 2016 version of the ethical guidelines, CIOMS provides answers to a number of pressing issues in research ethics. The Council does so by stressing the need for research having scientific and social value, by providing special guidelines for health-related research in low-resource settings, by detailing the provisions for involving vulnerable groups in research and for describing under what conditions biological samples and health-related data can be used for research."--Page 4 de la couverture.

This book focuses on doing ethical research with children in today's climate of increased globalization, surveillance and awareness of children as competent research participants. It covers a range of conceptual, methodological and procedural issues, and provides a framework for doing ethical research with children. Written by international experts in the fields of early childhood research and ethics, this book supports students, practitioner-researchers and research gatekeepers with resources on how to conduct and evaluate ethical research with children. The contributors: Use key examples of cutting-edge research from a range of countries to examine research ethics with children and those around them Provide strategies for planning, conducting and evaluating research in an ethical way Explore theoretical approaches to children and childhood that are relevant to ethical research Ethical Research with Children is key reading for students in childhood studies, teacher education, public health, nursing, human services, legal studies, psychology and social sciences, as well as practitioner-researchers in these fields.

In this edited volume, a diverse group of scholars present and discuss challenging cases in the field of pediatric research ethics. After years of debate and controversy, fundamental questions about the morality of pediatric research persist: Is it ever permissible to use a child as a means to an end? How much authority should parents have over decisions about research that involves young children? What should be the role of the older child in decisions about research participation? How do the dynamics of hope and desperation influence decisions about research involving dying children? Should children or their parents be paid for participation in research? What about economic incentives for doctors, researchers and the pharmaceutical industry? Most importantly, how can the twin goals of access to the benefits of clinical research and protection from research risk be reconciled? Following an introductory overview by editor Eric David Kodish, the book is divided into three sections of case studies: Research Involving Healthy Children, Research Involving At Risk Children, and Research Involving Children with Serious Illness. Each case raises compelling ethical issues, and the analysis presented in each chapter illuminate the challenges posed across a wide spectrum of both research protocols and stories of individual case-based approach, this book provides a balanced and through account of the enduring dilemmas that arise when children become research subjects.