ReviewTheoretical medicine and bioethics2004
Parental refusals of medical treatment: the harm principle as threshold for state intervention.
Review in Theoretical medicine and bioethics, 2004. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 113 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
113 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Endocrine Management of Transgender and Gender-Diverse Adolescents: Expert Opinion of the ESPE Working Group on Gender Incongruence and the Endo-ERN Main Thematic Group on Sexual Development and Maturation.Hormone research in paediatrics · 2026Guideline
- Telling is Caring: Prioritizing the Best Interests of Dying Children.HEC forum : an interdisciplinary journal on hospitals' ethical and legal issues · 2026Article
- Genomic newborn screening: data retention for research and clinical reuse.European journal of human genetics : EJHG · 2026Article
- Gene Therapy-Related Malignancy and the Risk of Cancer Exceptionalism.Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology · 2026Article
- An Ethical Analysis of Medicalization and Infant Mental Healthcare.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2026Article
- Ethical issues in providing comprehensive abortion care to adolescents: a qualitative study of healthcare providers in the Eastern Region of Ghana.BMC medical ethics · 2026Article
- Article
- Responding to ethical dilemmas in pediatric nephrology: a framework for clinicians in varied practice settings.Pediatric nephrology (Berlin, Germany) · 2025Review
- Safe Enough: Subjective Determinations in Hospital Discharge for Patients With Medical Complexity.Pediatrics · 2025Article
- What's Best and Who Decides for Seriously Ill Infants? A Malaysian Perspective.Asian bioethics review · 2025Article
- Debate: Should Parents be able to Request Non-Resuscitation for All Extremely Premature Newborn Infants?Asian bioethics review · 2025Article
- Article
- Doctor-Parent Disagreement for Preterm Infants Born in the Grey Zone: Do Ethical Frameworks Help?Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2024Article
- Management dilemmas in pediatric nephrology: moving from friction to flourishing in "challenging" cases.Pediatric nephrology (Berlin, Germany) · 2024Article
- The Effects of Introducing a Harm Threshold for Medical Treatment Decisions for Children in the Courts of England & Wales: An (Inter)National Case Law Analysis.Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy · 2024Article
- Navigating the post-Dobbs landscape: ethical considerations from a perinatal perspective.Journal of perinatology : official journal of the California Perinatal Association · 2024Review
- The harm threshold and Mill's harm principle.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2024Article
- Ethical frameworks of informed consent in the age of pediatric precision medicine.Cambridge prisms. Precision medicine · 2024Article
- Pediatric Decision-Making for Children in State Custody.Perspectives in biology and medicine · 2024Article
- On compromising with vaccine-hesitant families.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2024Article
53 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Minors are generally considered incompetent to provide legally binding decisions regarding their health care, and parents or guardians are empowered to make those decisions on their behalf. Parental authority is not absolute, however, and when a parent acts contrary to the best interests of a child, the state may intervene. The best interests standard is the threshold most frequently employed in challenging a parent's refusal to provide consent for a child's medical care. In this paper, I will argue that the best interest standard provides insufficient guidance for decision-making regarding children and does not reflect the actual standard used by medical providers and courts. Rather, I will suggest that the Harm Principle provides a more appropriate threshold for state intervention than the Best Interest standard. Finally, I will suggest a series of criteria that can be used in deciding whether the state should intervene in a parent's decision to refuse medical care on behalf of a child.
Indexed as
Identifiers
15637945What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.