Ross here presents an original and controversial look at the moral principles that guide parents in making health care decisions for their children, and the role of children in the decision-making process. She opposes the current movement to increase child autonomy, in favor of respect for family autonomy and proposes significant changes in what informed consent allows and requires for pediatric health care decisions. The first systematic medical ethics book that focuses specifically on children's health care, Ross's work has important things to say to health care providers who work with children as well as to ethicists and public policy analysts.

• Part I: The Development of a Health Care Decision-Making Model for Children


• 1: Introduction


• 2: A Limited Theory of the Family


• 3: Constrained Parental Autonomy


• 4: Respect for the Competent Child


• Part II: Applications of Constrained Parental Autonomy


• 5: The Child as Research Subject


• 6: The Child as Organ Donor


• 7: The Child as Patient


• 8: The Sexually Active Adolescent


• 9: Conclusion


• Bibliography; Index

Lainie Friedman Ross, MD, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Medicine, and Assistant Director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, at the University of Chicago. After taking her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and doing her residency in children's and babies' hospitals in Philadelphia and New York City, she took a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Yale. She has been on the faculty at the University of Chicago since 1994.