Research Exceptionalism?: New Ways of Thinking about the Old Problem of Minimal Risk Research with Children

The ethics of research with children that has no prospect of direct benefit to the child research participants is reasonably well settled in practice, but lacks a fully satisfactory account to justify current practices. The difficulty lies in two matters: (i) the way the supposed solution is framed as the equivalent of informed consent in competent, mature adults; and (ii) in the often unstated assumption that the decisions parents make in other settings are not comparable in their moral complexities with decisions whether to enrol children in research that poses little risk to them but may benefit others significantly. I will call this “research exceptionalism” and argue that it has been an impediment to thinking insightfully about minimal risk research with children.