Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Young Children

In the wake of the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans cases, a wide-ranging international conversation was started regarding alternative thresholds for intervention and the different balances that can be made in weighing up the rights and interests of the child, the parent's rights and responsibilities and the role of medical professionals and the courts. This collection provides a comparative perspective on these issues by bringing together analysis from a range of jurisdictions across Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia.
Contextualising the differences and similarities, and drawing out the cultural and social values that inform the approach in different countries, this volume is highly valuable to scholars across jurisdictions, not only to inform their own local debate on how best to navigate such cases, but also to foster inter-jurisdictional debate on the issues.
The book brings together commentators from the fields of law, medical ethics, and clinical medicine across the world, actively drawing on the view from the clinic as well as philosophical, legal and sociological perspectives on the crucial question of who should decide about the fate of a child suffering from a serious illness.
In doing so, the collection offers comprehensive treatment of the key questions around whether the current best interests approach is still appropriate, and if not, what the alternatives are. It engages head-on with the concerns seen in both the academic and popular literature that there is a need to reconsider the orthodoxy in this area.

Imogen Goold is Associate Professor and Jonathan Herring is Professor, both at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.
Cressida Auckland is Assistant Professor in the Department of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

1. Introduction
Imogen Goold, Cressida Auckland and Jonathan Herring
2. Identifying Who and What, then How: Attending to the Role of the Decision-Maker in the Normative Debate about the Best Interests Standard
Rosalind McDougall
3. Parental Rights, Best Interests and Significant Harm: Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Children in Belgium
Ingrid Boone
4. 'Parental Rights', 'Best Interests' and the Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Medical Treatment of Children in Scotland: A Lack of Authority
Alan Brown
5. Parental Decisions on their Children's Medical Treatment in Switzerland
Andrea Büchler
6. Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Minors: The Hong Kong Context
Daisy Cheung
7. Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Children in China: A Multidimensional Analysis of Parental Authoritarianism
Ding Chunyan
8. Parental Rights in Mexican Law
Mariana Dobernig Gago
9. Decision-Making on Behalf of Children in the Research and Clinical Context: A United States Perspective
Leslie Francis, Jeff Botkin and Douglas Diekema
10. Withholding and Withdrawal of Life-Prolonging Treatment from Young Children in Israel
Roy Gilbar
11. Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Children in English and Welsh Law: A Child-Centred Best Interests Approach
Imogen Goold, Cressida Auckland and Jonathan Herring
12. Parental Rights, Best Interests and Significant Harms: Singapore and Malaysia Perspectives on Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Children
Calvin WL Ho and Sharon Kaur
13. Decisions about their Body: Children's Rights and Parental Responsibility in Chile
Fabiola Lathrop Gómez
14. Who has the Final Word? On Trust and Legal Uncertainty within the Swedish Healthcare System
Pernilla Leviner
15. Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Children in Ireland
Lydia Bracken and John Lombard
16. Decisionally Incapable Children and Medical Treatment Choices in Canada
Constance MacIntosh
17. Offering a Reasonable Future: Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Treatment from Infants in French Law with Illustrations from a Parisian Neonatal Resuscitation Unit
Jean-Frédéric Ménard
18. Parental Responsibility and Medical Decision-Making in Southern Africa: A Comparative Analysis of
South Africa and Botswana
Admark Moyo
19. Young Children and Healthcare Decisions in Spain: Who Decides?
Monica Navarro-Michel
20. Who Decides the Best Interests of the Child in the End-of-Life Process? A Look at the Peruvian and Argentine Reality
Paula Siverino Bavio
21. Reviewing Medical Decisions Concerning Infants within the Norwegian Healthcare System: A Public Law Approach
Karl Harald Sovig
22. Children and Medical Decision-Making in Australia Post-Gard: A Possible Reformulation
Cameron Stewart
23. Parental Authoritarianism and Medical Decision-Making in Thailand: The Need to Limit Parental Authority
Thitinant Tengaumnuay
24. Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Critically Ill Minors in Greece
Theodoros Trokanas
25. Making Decisions for Children in Healthcare and Medical Research: African Communal Responsibility or Individual Rights?
Samuel J Ujewe
26. The Relevance of Cultural Competence to Resolving Disputes in Relation to Medical Decisions for Children
Ben Gray
27. Legal and Cultural Differences in Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Very Young Children
Imogen Goold and Cressida Auckland