Participation of children in clinical trials: UK, European and international legal perspectives on consent

The Declaration of Helsinki was, until recently, the leading international code on the conduct of clinical trials on human subjects. The Council of Europe's Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (1997) and the ICH guidelines for Good Clinical Practice (1996) represent a significant step towards increased harmonization of standards in the conduct of medical experiments on human subjects. But in spite of emerging areas of consensus, there remain important areas of unclarity and divergence. Medical practitioners involved in paediatric research in the UK are concerned about the lack of certainty in the law, particularly on the application of consent rules to emergency research. This paper examines UK, European and International norms on the participation of children in medical research and compares the circumstances under which consent rules may be waived under each normative regime.