6 - Ethical issues in neuroimaging research with children

Summary

Introduction

The “Decade of the Brain” has witnessed a burgeoning of neuroimaging in psychiatric research with children and adolescents. A 1994 survey of the research use of various biological procedures reported in five major journals over a 5-year period revealed 18 reports based on brain imaging, constituting 15% of the reports of biological procedures (Arnold et al., 1995, 1996). Nine of these reports (8%) employed procedures utilizing ionizing radiation. The use of such procedures has increased and has become more frequent in children and adolescents. As with much other research technology, neuroimaging was initially used only in adults and is being extended to minors. Its application to children and adolescents raises additional ethical issues involving both risks and benefits, which will be reviewed here.

Children have often been “research orphans” whose exclusion from research has limited their ability to benefit from it. With the recent adoption by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of a policy encouraging the inclusion of children in research, their role in neuroimaging research is now entering a new era. Similar to the NIH policy on the inclusion of women and minorities in research, the new policy for the inclusion of children requires explicit justification whenever minors are to be excluded from research. Both policies are designed to extend the benefits of research to groups that have been historically neglected by the scientific community.

Throughout this review, the three principles for the protection of human subjects of scientific research, established in the Belmont report (1979), will be honored.