The Motion of the Italian National Bioethics Committee on Aggressive Treatment towards Children with Limited Life Expectancy

Abstract

The motion of the Italian National Bioethics Committee entitled “Aggressive treatment or therapeutic obstinacy on young children with limited life expectancy” comprises a premise that rejects therapeutic obstinacy and makes 12 recommendations. Recommendation no. 1 states the general rules: it ascribes a cardinal role to a shared care plan, it supports pain management therapy and pain relief, it opposes ineffective and disproportionate clinical treatment and defensive medicine. The other recommendations are correlated to the enacting of a national law establishing clinical ethics committees in paediatric hospitals; participation of parents and their fiduciaries in the decision-making processes; recourse to courts only as extrema ratio in the event of irremediable disagreement between the medical team and the family members; accompaniment at the end of life also through continuous deep sedation combined with pain therapy; access to palliative care; the need to reinforce research on pain and suffering in children; clinical trials and research studies conducted in children; the training of doctors, healthcare personnel and psychologists, to support parents in emotional and practical terms; the facilitation of the closeness of parents to children in extremely precarious clinical conditions; the relevant role of the associations of parents of sick children. Comments are made, in particular, about the innovative recommendations respectively relating to the adoption of care planning, the establishment, by law, of clinical ethics committees in paediatric hospitals and the limitation of recourse to courts—only as extrema ratio—in the event of irremediable disagreement between the medical team and the family members.

Keywords

• Italian National Bioethics Committee
• young children
• short life expectancy
• aggressive treatments
• therapeutic obstinacy