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Peer-reviewed article

Clinical Ethics in Pediatrics: An International Perspective

In this article, we first review the development of clinical ethics in pediatrics in the United States. We report that, over the last 40 years, most children’s hospitals have ethics committees but that those committees are rarely…

By John D. LantosJanuary 1, 20191 min readin The Journal of Clinical Ethics

In this article, we first review the development of clinical ethics in pediatrics in the United States. We report that, over the last 40 years, most children’s hospitals have ethics committees but that those committees are rarely consulted. We speculate that the reasons for the paucity of ethics consults might be because ethical dilemmas are aired in other venues. The role of the ethics consultant, then, might be to shape the institutional climate and create safe spaces for the discussion of difficult and sometimes contentious issues. Finally, we report how pediatric clinical ethics has evolved differently in a number of other countries around the world.

Originally published at The Journal of Clinical Ethics · January 1, 2019.

About the author

John D. Lantos is a pediatrician and bioethicist writing on AI in medicine, neonatal intensive care, and end-of-life decisions. His essays appear in JAMA, JAMA Pediatrics, the Hastings Center Report, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Aeon. Read more about John.

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