Online Pediatric Research: Addressing Consent, Assent, and Parental Permission

Informed consent, parental permission, and assent in pediatric practice.

The statement on informed consent, parental permission, and patient assent has a long and extraordinary history. The first draft of this document, prepared by William G. Bartholome, MD, was presented to the original American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Bioethics in 1985. Bill put his soul into the manuscript and has watched over it carefully ever since. Now, a decade later, those w...

Parental Permission and Child Assent in Research on Children

Grounded on the ethical principle of respect for persons, parental permission and child assent function together to protect the child and to foster the development of the child's self-determination. Although both parental permission and child assent involve the same components of information sharing, comprehension, and voluntariness, how these three components are understood and operationalized...

Parental consent for pediatric research.

Parental permission, information, and consent.

One hundred and fifty parents of emergency paediatric admissions were interviewed; 60 of 106 (57%) blood samples were taken and 107 of 120 (89%) treatment regimens were instituted without their permission. Furthermore, the reasons for over half the blood tests and 31% of the drug treatments were not explained.

Consent and Assent in Pediatric Research: Whose Right Is It Anyway?

Although the right to health care is not written into the U.S. Constitution, moral and ethical tenets govern the delivery of optimal medical care universally and across the life continuum. Pertaining to children, in accordance with the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924 and the United Nations Human Rights General Assembly adoption of the Rights of the Child in 1959, parents o...