Consent to Medical Research on Children

Abstract

It is widely believed, at least it is often said, that it is morally wrong to subject any human being to medical research without his or her free informed consent. Precisely why this is, or even might be, wrong remains something of a mystery because most of the rapidly growing literature dealing with consent in medical ethics is more concerned with the application of this requirement to problematic cases than with its theoretical justification. As long as the general principle that consent to medical research is morally necessary remains virtually unquestioned, it may be imagined that any inquiry into its justification would be an idle exercise in theoretical speculation. I suggest, on the contrary, that we would have a much better understanding of when and how the principle of consent applies in practice if we had a better grasp of the reasons that lie behind that principle in the first place.