The ethical rights of the child patient.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to adequately address the complex ethical dimensions of health care using the language of patients' rights. However, talk about rights has become such a popular way to express our ethical beliefs that it is important that we at least address questions like what are the ethical rights of cancer patients. A special problem arises when the patient involved is an infant or small child. Many adult members of our society are uncomfortable with the idea of children's rights. In fact, many analysts have argued that talk of such rights is nonsense. Within the context of the intimate, shared existence of the family, talk of children's rights may seem unnecessary or even inappropriate. The parent-child relationship has historically been defined ethically in terms of parental duties/obligations and children's needs. The author will argue that, regardless of how one resolves the debate about the rights of infants and children vis-a-vis their parents, it is essential in our present society that infants and children as patients in the health care context of in a variety of relationships outside the family be seen and responded to as right-bearing persons like ourselves. The author will argue that infants and small children in the health care context have the "right to be treated as a person" and sketch some of the consequences of granting this right to children undergoing treatment for malignant disease.
D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003657:Decision Making; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D006806:Human Rights; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007938:Leukemia / Q000628:therapy*; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010344:Patient Advocacy