As a study involving diabetes care demonstrates, children sometimes have a much more sophisticated capacity for taking charge of their own health care decisions than is usually recognized in bioethics. Protecting these children from their disease means involving them in their treatment as much as possible, helping them to understand it and take responsibility for it so that they can navigate the multitude of daily decisions that become part of the diabetes medical regimen.

This first volume in the four-volume series The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law focuses on the "harm principle," the commonsense view that prevention of harm to persons other than the perpetrator is a legitimate purpose of criminal legislation. Feinberg presents a detailed analysis of the concept and definition of harm and applies it to a host of practical and theoretical issues, showing how the harm principle must be interpreted if it is to be a plausible guide to the lawmaker.

A dearth of clinical research involving children has resulted in off-licence and sometimes inappropriate medications being prescribed to the paediatric population. In this environment, recent years have seen the introduction of a raft of regulation aimed at increasing the involvement of children in clinical trials research and generating evidence-based medicinal preparations for their use. However, this regulation pays scant attention to the autonomy of competent minors. In particular, it makes no provision for the ability of competent minors to consent to (...) participate in medical research and is therefore at odds with best ethical practice. This article explores the tensions between law and ethics in relation to clinical research involving minors and concludes that greater respect should be given to the autonomy of those minors who are competent to decide for themselves. (shrink)