Persistent fears about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and whether immunization programs are still needed, have led a significant minority of parents to refuse vaccination. Are parents within their rights when refusing to consent to vaccination? How ought physicians respond? Focusing on routine childhood immunization, we consider the ethical, legal, and clinical issues raised by 3 aspects ...

Objective: To assess whether continuous consent, a process in which information is given to research participants at different stages in a trial, and clinician training in that process were effective when used by clinicians while gaining consent to the Total Body Hypothermia (TOBY) trial. The TOBY trial is a randomised controlled trial (RCT) investigating the use of whole-body cooling for neona...

OBJECTIVES An expectation of research is that participants should give fully informed consent. However, there is also a need to maximise recruitment to ensure representativeness. We explored the impact of passive or active parental consent on consent, completion rates and on dietary data quality in a survey among children aged 11-12 years. SETTING Six middle schools in North-East England. P...

Newborn screening has evolved to include an increasingly complex spectrum of diseases, raising concerns that screening should be optional and require parental consent. Early detection of disorders like PKU and MCAD is essential to prevent serious disability and death in affected children. These are examples of high benefit-risk ratio disorders because of the irrefutable health benefits of early...

Current methods of obtaining consent for emergency neonatal research are flawed. They risk aggravating the distress of parents of preterm and other sick neonates. This distress, and the inevitable time constraints, compromise understanding and voluntariness, essential components of adequately informed consent. Current practice may be unjust in over-representing babies of more vulnerable and dep...

journal of law, medicine & ethics Background Most babies born each year in the U.S. undergo mandatory newborn screening to detect serious medical conditions that can cause devastating effects if treatment is not initiated prior to the onset of symptoms.1 Not all of the blood collected from newborns is used during routine newborn screening, and many states retain the residual dried blood samples...

In 2007, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) released a revised National statement on ethical conduct in human research. Public submissions in the review process leading to the 2007 statement highlighted four main areas of concern: children's competence to consent, mature minors and the requirement for parental consent, whether children can refuse to participate, and the pr...

Adolescents, defined by WHO as 10 to 19 years old, can give independent consent for reproductive health services if their capacities for understanding have sufficiently evolved. The international Convention on the Rights of the Child, almost universally ratified, limits parental powers, and duties, by adolescents’ bevolving capacitiesQ for self-determination. Legal systems may recognize bmature...