An ethical critique on the national guidelines for pediatric research

Pediatric research is a complicated and sensitive field of research that involves specific legal, ethical, and even philosophical aspects; therefore the guideline of pediatric research is considered one of the important ethical guidelines in research. Although this ethical guideline has been used for some years, a need for its revision is always felt with the passing of time. Accordingly this study was carried out through library search, aiming to present a critical ethical review of the national guidelines for pediatric research. One important ethical issue is obtaining informed consent from children of various age groups, and the performance of the ethical committee in case of conflict between the child and his parent(s) or guardian. Recent studies show that getting informed consent needs to be revised and a new guideline must be developed for each age group. Another important issue is the unlawfulness of monetary incentives in pediatric research, which is nowadays being questioned. Among the topics discussed in ethical codes is the beneficence and non maleficence of the research for children, while the ruling philosophy in pediatric research has posed great challenges in the process. This has caused some research to lack quality and researchers are reluctant to do pediatric research. In terms of information dissemination and confidentiality, there seems to be a lot of debate regarding the child’s age, and therefore these issues should be taken into account for revision. Hence we propose that in order to improve the quality of research, the present ethical guideline be revised and based on past experiences, legal and ethics professionals as well as philosophers and lecturers be involved in the process.