The Great Ormond Street Hospital Textbook of Paediatric Bioethics and Law

The Great Ormond Street Hospital Textbook of Paediatric Bioethics and Law is the first definitive reference to be produced by a world-leading children's hospital on the medical ethics and law applying to the care of children in a 21st century healthcare environment, exploring the challenges that children, their families, and those looking after them must face.

Healthcare professionals involved in the care of children are faced with controversies about decision-making, including genomics, personalised medicine, gene therapy, transplants, and the transfer of life-sustaining treatments from the ICU to the home. In addition, although patient safety and transparency are improving, recurrent high-profile worldwide institutional and individual failures have led to the need for mechanisms of external accountability and assessment. Open deliberation about the ethical issues increasingly faced in paediatrics and child health, backed by knowledge of the relevant law and considered together with children and their families, is the best solution for all these concerns.

This textbook enables better dialogue about the hard decisions made on a daily basis, considers how new and innovative treatments can be used in an ethical and lawful manner, and discusses when life sustaining therapy should be stopped, not started, or have limits set.