Pediatrics

Abstract

This entry considers pediatric bioethics in a global context. Like any analysis of a global nature, many of the questions in pediatric bioethics globally – e.g., what constitutes legitimate agency, authority, decision-making, the role of family, and truth-telling – reflect the fundamental philosophical tension between universality and particularity in social and political theory. One question of global relevance that navigates this tension is the moral and legal status of the child, specifically, how changing conceptions of the child have led to a global normative understanding of the child as a moral agent in his or her own right. One striking feature of this understanding is the wide acceptance of two notions that have fundamentally altered – and arguably universalized – the status of the child: the best interests principle, which defends a view of the child as having interests, and the rights of the child, which recognize the child as rights bearer. While the best interests standard has been challenged for its indeterminacy, it remains relevant on account of the flexibility that renders it applicable to a broad range of cultures. Thus, the indeterminacy of the best interests standard, it is argued, is both a strength and a limitation; and it is the strength of its indeterminacy that has led to its globalizing and localizing appeal.