CYIL vol. 11 (2020)

MARTIN ŠOLC

CYIL 11 (2020)

THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILD IN MEDICAL RESEARCH Martin Šolc*

Abstract: There is no doubt that children represent a vulnerable group in many contexts. That also applies to medical research since minor participants are generally not capable of granting a fully informed and truly autonomous consent. Nevertheless, research on children is hardly replaceable for advancing paediatric medicine and minimising its risks. In this paper, we analyse how the best interests of the child in the context of medical research are protected by international law in Europe as well as Czech legal regulation. We also use Kantianism as a strictly deontological normative theory to test whether the rules aiming at the protection of the best interests of the child can be considered sufficient from the ethical perspective. Resumé: Není pochyb o tom, že děti v mnoha kontextech představují zranitelnou skupi- nu. To platí i pro oblast medicínského výzkumu, neboť nezletilí zpravidla nejsou schopni udělit plně informovaný a skutečně autonomní souhlas se svojí účastí. Výzkum na dětech je ovšem stěží zastupitelným pro rozvoj dětského lékařství a snižování jeho rizik. V tomto článku analyzujeme, jak je nejlepší zájem dítěte v kontextu medicínského výzkumu chráněn mezinárodním právem v Evropě a českým právním řádem. Dále používáme kantismus coby přísně deontologickou normativní teorii, abychom ověřili, zda předmětné normy směřující k ochraně nejlepšího zájmu dítěte mohou být považovány za dostačující z etického hlediska. Key words: the best interests of the child, medical research, health law, medical ethics, Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, Convention on the Rights of the Child, European Convention on Human Rights About the Author: JUDr. Mgr. Martin Šolc is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Civil Law and a researcher at the Centre for Medical Law at the Faculty of Law, Charles University. He specializes in medical law and ethics with an emphasis on medical research. solcma@prf.cuni.cz. Introduction One of the most famous medical experiments in history took place in England in May 1796. In the midst of a devastating smallpox epidemic, physician Edward Jenner utilised old wisdom that people who have had less dangerous cowpox are protected from smallpox. He inoculated eight-year-old son of his gardener with cowpox and, after some time, with smallpox. The boy, James Phipps, never got ill with the latter disease and lived to the age of sixty-five in a house borrowed from Jenner. Edward Jenner later successfully repeated the procedure in his own children. The era of vaccination begun, ultimately saving uncountable millions of lives. 1 * This paper was written with the support of the Charles University UNCE/HUM/011 “Human Rights Research Centre”. 1 See RIEDEL, Stefan. Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccination. Baylor University Medical Centre Proceedings. (2005, Vol. 18, No. 1), pp. 21-25. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/08998280.2005.11928028, ŠOLC, Martin. Právo, etika a kmenové buňky [Law, Ethics, and Stem Cells]. Wolters Kluwer, Praha 2018, pp. 43-44,

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