| An Exploration of Ethical Issues in Research in Children's Health and the Environment Jerome A. Paulson Mid-Atlantic Center for Children's Health and the Environment, George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, Washington, DC, USA Abstract
The consideration of ethical issues relating to pediatric environmental health is a recent phenomenon. Discussions of biomedical ethics, research on children, and environmental health research have a longer history. In the late 1990s, researchers at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, undertook a study to compare the effectiveness of several methods of reducing lead risk in housing. In a preliminary finding in the case of Grimes v. Kennedy Krieger Institute, Inc., a Maryland court questioned the ethics of performing research on children when there is no prospect of direct benefit to those children and whether parents can consent to such research. This case dramatically raised the profile of ethical issues among the pediatric environmental health research community. To broaden the discussion of these issues and in response to the Kennedy-Krieger case, the Children's Environmental Health Network held a working meeting on 5 and 6 March 2004 to explore this topic. The articles in this mini-monograph were prepared by the authors as a result of the workshop and represent their opinions. This article is an introduction to the workshop and a summary of the articles to follow. Key words: bioethics, children, community-based research, confidentiality, environmental exposure, environmental health, environmental justice, ethics, financial disclosure, institutional review board. Environ Health Perspect 114:1603–1608 (2006) . doi:10.1289/ehp.9000 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 14 August 2006]
This article is part of the mini-monograph "Ethical Issues in Pediatric Environmental Health Research." Address correspondence to J.A. Paulson, Mid-Atlantic Center for Children's Health and the Environment, George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, 2100 M St. NW, Suite 203, Washington, DC 20036 USA. Telephone: (202) 833-4687. E-mail: jpaulson@cnmc.org This conference was sponsored by a cooperative agreement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (grant C13/CCC323017-01) . In-kind support for the meeting and meeting space was provided by the American Association for the Advancement of Science through the efforts of A. Chapman and V. Baxter. Financial support for this publication was provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (contract 200-2005-M-11901) . S. Beirne, at the time of the meeting a fourth year medical student at the University of Washington in Seattle and the first J. Routt Reigart fellow at the Children's Environmental Health Network (CEHN) , played an essential role in coordinating all of the details to bring the conference to fruition. J.A.P. was a paid consultant to CEHN at the time of workshop presentation on which this article is based. Received 11 January 2006 ; accepted 26 April 2006.
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