Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics
Center Highlights
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Register Now for the 16th Annual Bioethics Conference
Please join us July 23–24, 2021, for our conference, “Pushing the Limits: Children, Athletics and Ethics.” Registration is now open.
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Should Kids Be Required to Get a COVID-19 Vaccine? An Ethics Perspective
As COVID-19 cases in Washington state and around the world continue to rise, there is increasing focus on when a vaccine will be available and to whom. But are COVID-19 vaccines being developed safely? Who will get the vaccine first and why? Should children be required to get it? We asked Dr. Doug Opel these questions and more.
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Special Supplement: Defining Cases in Pediatric Bioethics
A special supplement published in Pediatrics features manuscripts from the 15th Annual Pediatric Bioethics Conference: “Defining Moments in Pediatric Bioethics: Future Insights From Past Controversies.”
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Dr. Jori Bogetz is Connecting Clinicians and Parents on a Deeper Level
She is focusing on enhancing communication and building clinician-family relationships to improve care for children with severe neurological impairment.
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Stephanie Kraft Seeks to Improve Informed Consent Process
She is studying how best to offer genomic sequencing to medically underserved primary care patients with a family history of breast or colon cancer.
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Dr. Kate Gentry Focuses on Communication Between Anesthesiologists and Parents
She is working to improve the informed consent process around anesthesia information, especially for families who do not speak English as a first language.
Key Partnerships
Partnerships are an essential part of the Treuman Katz Center’s mission. Our researchers collaborate with colleagues across the nation and around the world in pursuit of answers to complex bioethics questions.
Our partners include the Center for Clinical and Translational Research at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the Department of Bioethics and Humanities and the Institute of Translational Health Sciences at the University of Washington.
Bioethics Consultations
Our bioethicists provide practical guidance to families, providers, researchers and policymakers about patient care, public health and research issues. Our consultation service is available to colleagues throughout Seattle Children’s and the University of Washington, and we offer informal advice to people at outside institutions. Learn more about our services.
Publications
Bridges C, Duenas DM, Lewis H, Anderson K, Opel DJ, Wilfond BS, Kraft SA. Patient perspectives on how to demonstrate respect: Implications for clinicians and healthcare organizations. PLoS One. 2021 Apr 29;16(4):e0250999. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250999. eCollection 2021.
Johnson LM, Duenas DM, Wilfond BS. Conjoined Consent: Informed Consent When Donor and Recipient Are Both Research Participants. American Journal of Bioethics. 2021 Apr;21(4):106-107.
Kraft SA. Respecting Donor-Recipient Relationships in Research Decision-Making Commentary on: When Living Donor and Kidney Transplant Recipient Are Both Research Subjects. The American Journal of Bioethics. 2021 Apr;21(4):112-114.
Lee BM, Kraft SA. Fostering Relationships in Pediatric Oncology Research: A Relational Ethics Approach to Clinically Integrated Research. The American Journal of Bioethics. 2021 Apr;21(4):85-88.
Benedetti DJ, Lewis-Newby M, Roberts JS, Diekema DS. Pandemics and Beyond: Considerations When Personal Risk and Professional Obligations Converge. Journal of Clinical Ethics. 2021 Spring;32(1):20-34.
Kemper EW, Davis E, Bui AL, DeChalus A, Martos M, McDade JE, Seimears TL, Olszewski AE. The "War on Drugs" Affects Children Too: Racial Inequities in Pediatric Populations. American Journal of Bioethics. 2021 Apr;21(4):49-51.
Wilfond BS, Duenas DM, Johnson LM. Supporting Investigators in Challenging Cases: Unease in the Face of an Ethically Appropriate Action. American Journal of Bioethics. 2021 Apr;21(4):98-99.
Meyer MN, Gelinas L, Bierer BE, Hull SC, Joffe S, Magnus D, Mohapatra S, Sharp RR, Spector-Bagdady K, Sugarman J, Wilfond BS, Lynch HF. An ethics framework for consolidating and prioritizing COVID-19 clinical trials. Clinical Trials. 2021 Apr;18(2):226-233. Epub 2021 Feb 2.
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Our Experts in the Media
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Why kids need their own COVID-19 vaccine trials – 2/19/21 – National Geographic
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires that new vaccines be independently studied in children. This careful approach to pediatric research is a welcome contrast to the period from the 1900s until the 1970s, when some children were subjected to abuse in the name of medical progress, says Douglas Diekema, director of education for the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Seattle Children’s Hospital. “Few people know about the kids in institutions that were involved in egregious research,” he says.
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Five questions about COVID-19 vaccine trials in teens, answered – 2/1/21 – Science News for Students
Clinical trials are designed with safety in mind, says pediatrician Douglas Diekema. He works at Seattle Children’s Hospital in Washington. As a bioethicist, he studies codes of conduct in biology and medicine. Because kids can’t fully consent for themselves, he notes, scientists make sure the vaccine is safe in adults first.
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Vaccine trials ramp up in children and adolescents – 2/26/21 – Science
Adult deaths from COVID-19 dwarf those in children: In the United States, for example, young people make up about 250 of 500,000 total deaths. But for children, COVID-19 is still “causing more deaths than influenza does in a typical season,” says Douglas Diekema, a pediatrician and bioethicist at Seattle Children’s Hospital. “Those are unnecessary deaths and should be prevented.”
